|
Indian-American working on robots to improve daily life
Monday, September 27, 2010 01:20:14 PM,
IANS
|
|
Related
Articles |
|
India moves ahead with robotic revolution in
surgery
A robot performing surgery sounds like a scene out of a Hollywood
sci-fi flick. But fiction is fast turning into reality in Indian
operation theatres where high-precision robotic surgeries - a less
cumbersome procedure than conventional operations - are gaining
acceptance.
»
|
Washington:
They're mundane, yet daunting tasks: Tidying a messy room or
assembling a bookshelf from a kit of parts. Fetching a hairbrush
for someone who can't do it herself. What if a robot could do it
for you?
Assistant professor of computer science Ashutosh Saxena at the
Cornell University in the US, who did his B. Tech. from the Indian
Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 2004, is working to bring such
robots into homes and offices.
Saxena, who joined the Cornell faculty in 2009, believes robots
can make people's lives better and more productive, according to a
Cornell release.
"Just like people buy a car, I envision that in five to 10 years,
people will buy an assistive robot that will be cheaper or about
the same cost as a car," Saxena said.
Saxena leads Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab, which develops
software for complex, high-level robotics.
Among the lab's goals are programming robots that can clean up a
disheveled room, assemble a bookshelf and load and unload a
dishwasher -- all without human intervention.
One of the biggest technical challenges is endowing robots with
the ability to learn in uncertain environments.
It's one thing to make a robot do simple tasks: Pick up this pen.
Move to the left. It's quite another to make a robot understand
how to pick up an object it's never encountered or navigate a room
it's never seen.
"For example, if you look at a new object, how would you pick it
up? If you are in a new environment, how do you figure out how far
away things are?" Saxena said.
On a typical afternoon in Upson Hall's Personal Robotics Lab,
Saxena and his students can be found huddled around a computer
perfecting the coding to make their robots come alive.
One of their research platforms is a robotic arm with a gripper.
Using a camera, the robot evaluates an object -- say, a cup or
plate -- and figures out how best to grab it. This technology will
eventually integrate into the full-fledged dishwasher-loading
robot.
Another set of students works on a roving robot with a camera. Its
job is to find an object, such as a shoe, by systematically
scanning the room.
"In a cluttered room, it is notoriously difficult for today's
object detection algorithms to reliably find an object as simple
as a shoe," Saxena said.
The key is to not look at this task in isolation, he explained. If
the three-dimensional structure of the room is known, it becomes
easier to find the objects.
The lab is building learning algorithms to enable roboticists to
quickly combine several perception algorithms into a more reliable
one.
Graduate students Congcong Li and Adarsh Kowdle presented these
projects at the European Conference on Computer Vision, held in
Greece Sep 5-11.
|
|
|
|
Home |
Top of the Page |
|
 |
|
Comment on this article |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 News Pick |
|
 I came
this close to turning stone thrower in Srinagar
I lacked guts, otherwise a policeman
had done all he could to turn me into a stone-thrower on the
streets of Srinagar
» |
 Nursing
the sick with a smile at 73
At first sight of her, you might think
you are seeing the living Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who
has become an inspiration for many people for her charity work
in
» |
|
Maharashtra legislator to 'beg' from people!
In a unique protest, an independent legislator from Maharashtra
will "beg" and donate the collected money to Chief Minister Ashok
Chavan, an aide of the legislator said here Saturday.
Vivek Pandit, the independent
» |
Bihar Elections: Ticket
delay worries thousands of poll aspirants
Delay by political parties in
declaring their list of candidates for the upcoming Bihar assembly
elections is giving sleepless nights to thousands of ticket
aspirants, who are stressed
»
|
|
Indian
doctor is Nepal’s heart king
As World Heart Day is celebrated globally Sunday, Indian doctor Bharat Rawat and his wife Anjali are preparing something special
for a special heart patient admitted to their hospital in
Kathmandu - dosa without oil and
»
|
 'Bhindi
Bazaar' is for multiplexes, says Britain-based producer
Britain-based producer Karan Arora says his first Bollywood
venture "Bhindi Bazaar", which deals with the issue of
pickpocketing
» |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Top
Stories |
|
 Muslim clerics oppose further delay in Ayodhya
verdict
Muslim religious leaders Sunday joined their Hindu counterparts in
opposing any further postponement of the Allahabad High Court’s
verdict on the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi issue
»
Congress welcomes
Ayodhya deferment; BJP, Left differ
Congress
asks Advani, BJP not to reopen Ayodhya wounds
|
|
|
|
Picture of the Day |
|
 |
|
Due to the threats of riot and
terror attacks, the festive season in India
nowadays results in sleepless nights for the security
personnel.
Against this backdrop, the show of communal harmony in Malegaon by Ajantha Mandal cannot be more timely. The Mandal
in a large hoarding portrays the real picture of the Muslim
dominated textile town in North Maharashtra. It shows,
Malegaon is where Azan in a Masjid and Shunkh
in a Mandir go simultaneously. To further make its point,
the Mandal plays communal harmony songs on a cassette-player
in its full sound.
(Photo: ummid.com) |
|
|
|
|
Most
Read |
|
Middle
East peace talks in jeopardy
The future of the Middle East direct peace talks appeared to be in
jeopardy after Israel refused to extend a ban on West Bank
settlements, a media report said.
US officials made frantic attempts to broker a deal between
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators but failed to make a
breakthrough by the time the settlement freeze, imposed
»
|
|
Students
trickle in as Srinagar schools reopen
School staff turned up in large numbers as educational
institutions here reopened after over three months Monday. While
the student inflow was no more than a trickle and a curfew
prevailed, those who came said it was a pleasure to be back in
class. "I have come to my
» |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Quick links