Autonomous, do-it-all robots are still reality only in the Will Smith blockbuster “I Robot,” but scientists at Brown University have definitely made an important advance towards this goal. This way, a robotics team has demonstrated how a robot can follow nonverbal commands from a person in a variety of environments – indoors, as well as outside - all without adjusting for lighting.

"We have created a novel system where the robot will follow you at a precise distance, where you don't need to wear special clothing, you don't need to be in a special environment, and you don't need to look backward to track it," said Chad Jenkins, assistant professor of computer science at Brown University and the team's leader.

 

The Brown team started with a PackBot, a mechanized platform developed by iRobot that has been widely used by the U.S. military for bomb disposal, among other tasks. The researchers outfitted their robot with a commercial depth-imaging camera. They also geared the robot with a laptop that included novel computer programs that enabled the machine to recognize human gestures, decipher them and respond to them.

 

The researchers made two key advances with their robot. The first involved what scientists call visual recognition. Applied to robots, it means helping them orient themselves with respect to the objects in a room. "Robots can see things," Jenkins explained, "but recognition remains a challenge."

 

The second advance involved the depth-imaging camera. The team used a CSEM Swiss Ranger, which uses infrared light to detect objects and to establish distances between the camera and the target object, and, just as important, to measure the distance between the camera and any other objects in the area.

 

The result is a robot that doesn't require remote control or constant vigilance, which is a key step to developing autonomous devices. The team hopes to add more nonverbal and verbal commands for the robot and to increase the three-foot working distance between the commander and the robot.

  

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