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Smarter Robots In The Works

NPR
Published March 4, 2015 at 12:40 PM CST
CoBot, short for Collaborative Robot, is designed to be an office helper. The bots, made by a team at Carnegie Mellon University led by professor Manuela Veloso, can navigate around a building on their own. They are also smart enough to know when to ask humans for help, such as to press buttons and open doors. (cs.cmu.edu)
CoBot, short for Collaborative Robot, is designed to be an office helper. The bots, made by a team at Carnegie Mellon University led by professor Manuela Veloso, can navigate around a building on their own. They are also smart enough to know when to ask humans for help, such as to press buttons and open doors. (cs.cmu.edu)

Having robot office helpers could be pretty handy. But today’s machines are nowhere close to the smart, free-roaming robots you see in movies. Right now, robots couldn’t get around a building without tripping on chairs or getting stuck behind doors.

From Here & Now’s tech partner IEEE Spectrum, Prachi Patel reports on a new bot that will work better in human environments.

[Youtube]

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