Popular Press Coverage

Fintech Katapult to go public, at $1 billion

Katapult is set to go public, after the e-commerce financial technology announced Friday an agreement with SPAC/FSRV, that values company at $1 billion. Once the deal closes, which is expected to occur in the first half of 2021, the company will operate at Katapult and the stock is expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "KPLT."

Ashutosh co-founded Cognical (Katapult) in 2012 to give “underbanked” consumers a fast and convenient way to acquire life’s expensive necessities at a much lower cost than a predatory payday loan.

Published by: Marketwatch.

San Francisco Business Times: 40 under 40

Ashutosh Saxena was chosen among the 40 honorees from a mix of young executives at medium and large companies, startup visionaries and nonprofit chiefs across technology, finance, education, health care, biotech, hospitality, real estate and other industries.

People spend two-thirds of their time at home. There is a massive opportunity for AI to reimagine how people live in their homes. Caspar converts homes, buildings, and entire complexes into computing platforms, and envisions to become a launch-pad for a diversity of ‘apps for modern living’. Caspar partners with real estate developers who want to shape the future of living.

Published by: San Francisco Business Times.

#1 AI Company in Real-Estate, CB Insights AI 100

March 3, 2020. Caspar.AI Named to the 2020 CB Insights AI 100 List of Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups. Caspar is reshaping the real estate industry to allow for smart, sustainable design that both improves the residents’ living experience and reduces overall costs for property management. Real estate developers partner with Caspar to build differentiated smart properties, drive additional revenue, save costs, and enhance resident experience and retention.

Published by: CB Insights, Bloomberg.

Caspar for Seniors: Newswatch on AMC

7am ET Feb 7, 2020. Caspar Awareness - Smart, Safe Living for Seniors. Seniors are often unable to get up in the morning or they lack motivation to engage. Caspar detects such inactivity and alerts the property in case there is a situation such as a fall.

Published by: Newswatch on AMC.

How a Smart Home Helped a Senior Citizen During Social Isolation

March 31, 2020. Seniors become inactive for a variety of reasons, such as illness, fall or insufficient participation in physical activity. Caspar detects resident inactivity using federated machine learning from IoT sensor-equipped homes and notifies their respective care circle.

Published by: CBS.

TR35 Innovator Award for AI system Caspar

Caspar turns a home into a sort of robot that we can talk to and interact with. By later this summer, Caspar will have been installed in about 500 apartments in California and Tokyo.

Each of these apartments is outfitted with around 100 devices including motion and humidity sensors, microphones, cameras, thermostats, and automated appliances. All of these feed data about residents’ behavior to Caspar, which uses a number of algorithms to analyze the data so that it gradually learns and adapts to people’s habits and preferences.

Published by: MIT Technology Review.

The research hardware in your video-game system

‘Motion sensors don’t just drive gameplay. With the right software, they can scan dinosaur skulls, monitor glaciers and help robots to see.’

Caspar home operating system provides safety monitoring features for seniors. Saxena's algorithm ‘was able to learn what steps constituted a task, such as fetching food from an oven — sufficiently accurately to give it potential applications in manufacturing and safety monitoring.’

Published by: Nature.

A Home That Knows

A company, Brain of Things Caspar, is developing apartment buildings with sensors, automated appliances, and the ability to learn an owner’s habits.

Published by: MIT Technology Review, Computer World, Daily Mail.

10 Breakthrough Technologies in 2016: Robots that teach each other

What if robots could figure out more things on their own and share that knowledge among themselves?
Read my opinion piece on "Wikipedia for Robots"

Published by: MIT Technology Review

Eight Innovators to Watch in 2015.

Ashutosh Saxena envisions a world where robots can heed commands, such as "pour me a coffee" or "load the dishwasher," without step-by-step instructions. But unlike the novelists and screenwriters who have also dreamt this, he is actually making it happen... read more

Published by: Smithsonian Magazine

Cornell Startup Helps the 'Unbanked' Buy Online

The new company, called Cognical, was launched by Saxena, Brandon Wright MBA ’12 and Chinedu Eleanya '12. The “deep learning” algorithm they developed finds common patterns in the lives of borrowers who pay back their loans – and other patterns for those who don’t. Their online credit service is called Zibby, a name meant to suggest “quick and easy.” The company has raised more than $10 million... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Algorithms that anticipate what you’ll do next could lead to safer cars and smarter homes

We want our artificial intelligence algorithms—whether they’re in our robots, our cars or our appliances—to act less like automatons and more like engaged participants in whatever it is we’re doing.

Published by: Fortune

Taskmaster robots watch while you work in case you miss a step

A robot called Watch-Bot can watch people work, learn the steps that make up the task, then remind people when they forget a step. The robot learns unaided, finding patterns in human movements it observes... read more

Published by: New Scientist, Verge, IEEE Spectrum

Cats, Robot Baristas, Tricorders, and the Future of Deep Learning

Sometime in the summer of 2012 it was official: the internet is full of cats...More specifically, it was a computer network - fueled by 16,000 processors - that powered the Google Brain project... This might not sound particularly impressive on the face of it, but it was a seminal moment for the field of deep learning... One entertaining example is the Robobarista in Cornell University's Robot Learning Lab. Combining deep learning algorithms with a crowd-sourced database of everyday skills, the robot is using knowledge from completed tasks to tackle new, similar ones. Such as making the perfect latte. read more (RoboBarista)

Published by: Huffington Post (UK).

RoboWatch Learns Just By Watching YouTube

By analyzing a large number of YouTube videos, a new algorithm can generate a handy list of steps to complete any task. What's particularly exciting about RoboWatch is that it can learn without any human interaction. read more

Published by: Popular Mechanics, NPR, Verge, IEEE Spectrum

Brain4Cars: New Technology May Prevent Accidents By Reading Drivers' Body Language

While driver assist systems look at external factors to determine whether to take action, researchers at Cornell and Stanford that go by the name Brain4Cars are working on a prototype that also takes into account internal elements, namely drivers and their body language. The system uses some of the same cameras and sensors employed by driver assist systems along with a new computer algorithm to predict what a driver will do and then issues a warning or takes corrective action. read more (Brain4Cars)

Published by: Forbes. Also MIT Technology Review.

Robots Start to Grasp Food Processing

MIT Technology Review describes how robots are changing the food processing industry: our work from Cornell last year that won best cognitive system award at IROS, Georgia Tech's Food Processing Technology Division and Netherland based company Lacquey. In our work, we used machine learning to learn representations for tactile and force data during manipulating and cutting 100s of food items. read technical paper, best cognitive system at IROS

Published by: MIT Technology Review, Popular Science.

Brain4Cars: Car Predicts Driving Mistakes Before They Happen

Let's face it, almost all automobile crashes are caused by human error. But what if there were a way to predict driving mistakes right before they happen? That's the promise of new technology under development by researchers at Cornell and Stanford universities. read more (Brain4Cars)

Published by: CNN, Discovery News, PC Magazine, and others.

Robobarista: Crowdsourcing a coffee-pouring, juice-making robot

Clever new research from Cornell means that you can show the robot a coffee maker, hand it a sheet of natural language instructions, and it’ll fix you a latte, completely autonomously. Here’s the kicker: it can do all this even if it’s never seen the coffee maker before. PR2 can now do all of this by transferring trajectories from existing things that it has experience with to new things that it doesn’t. Tested on 100s of objects and appliances. read more (Robobarista)

Published by: Wired, IEEE Spectrum, Comm of ACM, CNet, Gizmag, Popular Science, and others.

Amazon Robot Contest May Accelerate Warehouse Automation

A key breakthrough in this area came in 2006, when Ashutosh Saxena, a member of Ng’s team at Stanford devised a way for robots to work out how to manipulate unfamiliar objects. Now an assistant professor at Cornell University, he is using deep learning to train a robot that will take part in the Amazon challenge. He is working with one of his students, Ian Lenz. read more

Published by: MIT Technology Review

RoboBrain: The World's First Knowledge Engine For Robots.

One of the most exciting changes influencing modern life is the ability to search and interact with information on a scale that has never been possible before. All this is thanks to a convergence of technologies that have resulted in services such as Google Now, Siri, Wikipedia and IBM’s Watson supercomputer... read more

Published by: MIT Technology Review

The Plan to Build a Massive Online Brain for All the World’s Robots.

If you walk into the computer science building at Stanford University, Mobi is standing in the lobby, encased in glass. He looks a bit like a garbage can, with a rod for a neck and a camera for eyes. He was one of several robots developed at Stanford in the 1980s to study how machines might learn to navigate their environment—a stepping stone toward intelligent robots that could live and work alongside humans. He worked, but not especially well. The best he could do was follow a path along a wall. Like so many other robots, his “brain” was on the small side... read more

Published by: Wired

Brainy, Yes, but Far From Handy.

Roboticists at Brown, Cornell, Stanford and Berkeley described a database called Robo Brain, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that is intended to offer an Internet-based repository of images and videos to give robots support for performing actions in the physical world... read more

Published by: New York Times

Robo Brain is learning from the internet.

As of July, the internet contained some 3.32 billion indexed pages. It's a pretty massive place and, while much of it is taken up with pictures of kittens and other less elucidating material, you can also hit up the net any time you want to learn a new skill; swing dancing, for instance, or how to open a champagne bottle with a sword... read more

Published by: CNet

"Robo Brain" to teach robots about the human world.

A new system being developed by computer scientists at Cornell University can both "learn" new information from the Internet and serve as a resource for increasingly intelligent robots... read more

Published by: CBS News

This robot is using YouTube videos to learn all about us.

Everything your future robotic servant needs to know, he can learn from Google. Cornell's "Robo Brain," which went online in July, is successfully perusing around one billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos and 100 million how-to manuals. Using these downloaded materials as a guide, the Robo Brain will develop a complex understanding of what different objects are and how to interact with them successfully. In the video below, for example, the robot makes an affogato... read more

Published by: Washington Post

Robotic brain 'learns' skills from the internet.

A super-intelligent robotic "brain" that can learn new skills by browsing millions of web pages has been developed by US researchers. Robo Brain is designed to acquire a vast range of skills and knowledge from publicly available information sources such as YouTube... read more

Published by: BBC

Robo Brain Lets Robots Learn From The Internet.

Cornell University has turned on its Robo Brain project that could allow robots to learn skills by analysing images, YouTube videos and how-to documents. Computer science professor Ashutosh Saxena told CNET: "Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want... read more

Published by: Sky News

The robot brain to rule them all: Plans for giant 'central knowledge server' to power millions of machines around the world revealed.

Researchers have begun work on a giant 'robot brain' they say could be used by millions of machines around the world. It will be a central store for everything from images to details of how to change a plug. Hosted on a server so any robot can access it, the system is currently downloading and processing 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals... read more

Published by: Daily Mail (UK)

Robo Brain Project Wants To Turn the Internet into a Robotic Hivemind.

Robo Brain isn’t exactly feasting on the internet. That implies a level of choice, or agency. What’s happening to Robo Brain is closer to force-feeding, as researchers from four different universities regularly cram its cloud-based computational system with data collected from the internet. So far, it has digested roughly 120,000 YouTube videos, a million documents, and a billion images... read more

Published by: Popular Science

Cornell’s ‘Robo Brain’ Helps Robots Learn.

Researchers at Cornell University are developing “Robo Brain”, a knowledgebase/database that could be an invaluable resource for those who build and program robots. To get them to operate and carry out their assigned tasks – which could range from simple household chores to bomb detection or even performing surgery – robots are programmed with specific instructions... read more

Published by: Voice of America

‘Robo Brain’ will teach robots everything from the Internet.

Robo Brain is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals, all being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format. The reason: to serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave... read more

Published by: KurzweilAI

New robot learns from plain speech, not computer code.

In a small kitchen, an amateur cook roots around in the cupboard for a package of ramen. He fills a pot with water, tosses in the noodles, and sets them on the stove to cook. But this chef won’t enjoy the fruits of his labor. That’s because he’s a robot who is learning to translate simple spoken instructions into the complex choreography needed to make a meal... read more

Published by: Los Angeles Times

Make robots useful by teaching them to talk like us.

When Ashutosh Saxena wants some coffee or ice cream, he can ask a robot to make it for him. Tell Me Dave is a large, vaguely humanoid bot that can cook simple meals according to spoken instructions. But programming Tell Me Dave to understand even one kind of order is tricky: humans have an annoying tendency to ask for the same thing in a variety of different ways, or to combine several discrete steps into one short command... read more

Published by: New Scientist

Help train robots to understand natural language.

The capabilities of robots are improving all the time, but the one thing that hasn't changed is that they still need to be programmed with step-by-step instructions whenever they learn how to do something new. When the time comes -- fingers crossed -- that we all have robot butlers to look after us, this could pose a challenge to those without the requisite programming skills... read more

Published by: Wired

Robot Responds to Natural Language Instructions, Brings You Fancy Ice Cream.

It's possible, even probable, that if you're reading this article on IEEE Spectrum, you either know how to program a robot or could figure it out if you really put your mind to it. But for the rest of us (indeed for most people), programming is not necessarily a skill that they have at their fingertips. And even if you're comfortable with writing code in general, writing code that gets a very complicated and expensive robot to do exactly what you want it to do is (to put it mildly) not easy... read more

Published by: IEEE Spectrum

The robot that can be programmed by talking to it.

When you say to a human, "Please make me some cheesy toast", there is a whole range of actions implicit in that action that are immediately understood: retrieving bread and cheese from where they're both kept, slicing both where required, turning on the grill, toasting the bread, and so forth... read more

Published by: CNet

This robot can make you ice cream.

View video like robot can make ice cream.

Published by: Washington Post

New research shows robots can learn quite a bit when fed a lot of data.

A trio of research projects out of Cornell, MIT and the University of Washington highlight the promise of building robots that can learn to do the things we want them to, but also suggest that patience on behalf of programmers will be a real virtue. Like any application of machine learning, robots will need a whole lot of data and possibly a whole lot of training... read more

Published by: GigaOm

Tell Me Dave Lets You Train A Robot To Respond To Complex Commands.

Sudo make me a sandwich, anyone? A new research project by a computer science team at Cornell University is using human volunteers to train robots to perform tasks. How is it unique? They’re showing robots how to infer actions based on very complex, human comments. Instead of having to say “move arm left 5 inches” they are hoping that, one day, robots will respond to “Make me some ramen” or “Clean up my mess”... read more

Published by: Techcrunch

Cornell team creates robot that understands casual commands, makes dessert.

Cornell researchers have built a robot that can understand natural language commands. The Robot Learning Lab released two videos showing a robot translating casual commands to make Top Ramen and an ice cream sundae. The first video reveals how the robot translates language into logical connectives, and the second shows an ice-cream-serving version that’s sure to the make the powerful fro-yo union go cray cray... read more

Published by: Venture Beat

Robots Are Smart -- But Can They Understand Us?

In the movies, you never hear robots say “Huh?”. For all his anxiety, "Star Wars"' C-3PO was never befuddled. Sonny, the pivotal non-human in "I, Robot" may have been confused about what he was, but didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding Will Smith... read more

Published by: Smithsonian Magazine

Your Gadgets Can Now Decide Everything For You Before the Thoughts Have Even Crossed Your Mind.

If knowledge is power, we’ve got a lot to be worried about. Because forget musing on what drink you fancy, or which book you should buy to make you look kooky in artisanal coffee houses, or even when you should dump your whiny boyfriend: your gadgets can now decide all of those things for you, before the thoughts have even crossed your mind... read more

Published by: The Daily Beast

Robots "to work in supermarkets".

The sound of "please put your item in the bagging area" has often provided irritation to a number of supermarket customers when using computerised check-outs but a new innovation could mean a more personalised service from a robot... read more

Published by: BBC

Attention, Kmart shoppers: there's a robot checker open in aisle six.

Wow, it’s happening already. Cornell robotics researchers are now teaching robots complex tasks such as performing as grocery-store checkout clerks... read more

Published by: KurzweilAI

Robots trained to become less deadly.

Before humans can trust robots to work as grocery store cashiers, these machines will have to prove they can do certain things like not squishing our perfect heirloom tomatoes or stabbing us with new kitchen knives at the checkout line... read more

Published by: FoxNews.com

Robots can learn to hold knives -- and not stab humans

November 2013

Published by: NBC News

Video Friday: IROS 2013, Swarming Quadrotors, and Baxter Tries Not to Stab You.

IROS and iREX have been spectacular, but we've barely had time to sit down, much less write articles. And there's still more to see: IROS wrapped up on Thursday, but we're heading back for the last full day of iREX tomorrow. So, expect to see a lot more IROS news from us next week, but for now, we'll get you caught up on (non-IROS) robot news from this week, and we'll throw in some new IROS videos for good measure... read more

Published by: IEEE Spectrum

Knife-wielding robot which learns through human touch.

Knife-wielding robot at Cornell University Personal Robotics lab learns to adapt its behaviour through human touch... read more

Published by: Daily Mail (UK)

Cornell Researchers Help Robot Unlearn Stabby Motions With A Human Trainer.

We humans enjoy not having knives inside of us. Robots don’t know this, three laws be damned. Therefore it’s important for humans to explain this information to robots using careful training. Thankfully, the good dudes at Cornell are on the case... read more

Published by: Techcrunch

Training a robot to (safely) wield a knife.

Technology is bringing the reality of having Jetson-like helpers in everyday life ever closer. Before we know it, there will be robots ringing up our groceries at the supermarket and washing the dishes before they pile up in the sink... read more

Published by: CBS News

Get ready for knife-wielding robot grocery clerks.

I've said before that certain experiments are a veritable cri de coeur for an Ig Nobel prize , the awards that honor silly but thoughtful science. Well, Cornell University graduate student Ashesh Jain and colleagues should be in the running for their bold attempts to teach robotic grocery store clerks of the future how to handle knives so they don't terrify human customers... read more

Published by: CNet

Knife-Wielding Supermarket Checkout Robot Taught Not To Stab Customers.

In what could prove to be one of the most important moves ever made by humanity, scientists have taught our soon-to-be-robot-overlords not to stab us... read more

Published by: Huffington Post (UK)

Researchers Are Finally Teaching Robots To Be Less Stabby.

Most of the news coming out of robotics research has us really worried about mankind's future, but Cornell University finally brings us a glimmer of hope. Researchers there are working on developing an algorithm through physical feedback that will teach robots to be more careful with certain objects—like say when handling a sharp knife around highly stabbable humans... read more

Published by: Gizmodo

Robot Pretends To Almost (Not Really) Eviscerate Human With Knife, For Science.

Here’s something disturbing: a video released by Cornell University showing a robot wielding a knife (the money shot, as it were, is above—scroll down for the full clip). The knife’s point comes perilously close to the torso of a researcher, who responds as most humans might to a robot carelessly swinging around a naked blade, and lurches away. Your attention, it’s safe to say, has been captured... read more

Published by: Popular Science

Robots Can Learn To Hold Knives — and Not Stab Humans.

We humans enjoy not having knives inside of us. Robots don't know this (Three Laws be damned). Therefore, it's important for humans to explain this information to robots using careful training. Researchers at Cornell University are developing a co-active learning method, where humans can correct a robot's motions, showing it how to properly use objects such as knives. They use it for a robot performing grocery checkout tasks... read more

Published by: Slashdot

The Human Touch Makes Robots Defter.

Cornell University researchers are developing ways to help humans and robots work together to find the best way to do a job, an approach known as coactive learning. "We give the robot a lot of flexibility in learning," says says Cornell professor Ashutosh Saxena. "We build on our previous work in teaching robots to plan their actions, then the user can give corrective feedback." The researchers started by trying to teach a Baxter robot to work on a supermarket checkout line. Baxter can be programmed by moving its arms through an action, but it also offers a mode in which a human can make adjustments. However, it is not always obvious to a human operator how best to move the arms to accomplish a particular task. The researchers thus added programming that enables the robot to plan its own motions. As the robot executes its movements, the operator can step in and guide the arms to fine-tune the trajectory. The researchers say the learning algorithm they developed enables the robot to learn incrementally, refining its trajectory a little more with each adjustment... read more

Published by: ACM Technews

Researchers Training a Robot to Work as Safe Cashier.

A group of researchers is striving hard to ensure robots are safe to be used as grocery store cashiers. For ensuring the same, they are empowering a robot to properly and safely handle a variety of objects. This is significant as mishandling of sharp knives to egg cartons can scare customers. Researchers are teaching the robot, dubbed as Baxter, based on human feedback in a grocery-store scenario... read more

Published by: French Tribune

Robots can learn to hold knives -- and not stab humans.

November 6, 2013

Published by: Discovery Channel Daily Planet

Think ahead: Robots anticipate human actions.

A robot in Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab has learned to foresee human action and adjust accordingly. The robot was programmed to refill a person’s cup when it was nearly empty. To do this the robot must plan its movements in advance and then follow the plan. But if a human sitting at the table happens to raise the cup and drink from it, the robot might pour a drink into a cup that isn’t there. But when the robot sees the human reaching for the cop, it can anticipate the human action and avoid making a mistake. In another test, the robot observed a human carrying an object toward a refrigerator and helpfully opened the refrigerator door... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

This Robot Learns to Pour Beer by Predicting Your Future.

Have you ever dreamed of owning a personal robot servant to pour your beers for you? The idea is now one step closer to reality. Researchers at Cornell University have programmed a robot that can predict what you’re about to do and offer up a helping hand. Using a Microsoft Kinect sensor, the robot watches your body movements. Then, it accesses a video database of about 120 household activities — ranging from putting food in the microwave, eating, brushing teeth, making cereal, and yes, pouring booze — to predict what your actions will be a few seconds into the future. The robot can then make a decision about what you’re likely to do next, and what it can do to assist you in that task... read more

Published by: Wired

Cheers! PR2 robot knows where to pour your beer.

You know summer's around the corner when robots are helping you grab a cold one. Now, an anticipatory algorithm is helping them refill your glass when you're ready for another round. Robot! Fetch me a beer! Yes, robots can actually carry out that order. Now, they can even anticipate where to pour your beverage of choice... read more

Published by: CNet

Finally, a Robot That Knows When You Want It to Pour You a Beer.

What’s better than a robot that can serve you beer? How about a robot that can tell when you’re about to move your glass, so it doesn’t accidentally pour the beer straight into your lap?.. read more

Published by: Slate Magazine

Robot, beer me, please.

Imagine a day coming when your robot servant will anticipate your every need, and even pour you an icy cold one when you command: “Robot, beer me, please!”. Thanks to the wonderful and very intelligent scientists at Cornell University’s Personal Robotics Lab, that day is here. Not only did the scientists invent a robot that can pour you a tall cold one, they can even anticipate where to pour your beverage of choice... read more

Published by: Guardian Liberty Voice

Smart Robot Tends to Your Every Need.

A new robot that can predict human actions with surprising accuracy is giving restaurant waitstaff and bellhops a run for their money. The Personal Robotics Lab at Cornell University has churned out a machine that can, among other things, refill your coffee cup and hold the door open for you... read more

Published by: Discovery News

Scientist Program Robot To Anticipate Human Needs Using Microsoft Kinect.

Cornell University's Personal Robotics Lab have created a robot that can anticipate and execute human needs according to Nature World News. The eyes of the helpful robot is made up of Microsoft Kinect 3-D camera that's combined with a 3-D database of videos that assist with decision making... read more

Published by: Headlines & Global News

The robot butler that can tend to your every need - even predicting when you want a beer AND pouring it for you.

A beer-pouring robot that can read your body movements and anticipate when you want another drink has been developed by American students. Researchers from Cornell University used Microsoft Kinect sensors and 3D cameras to help the robot analyse its surroundings and identify its owner's needs... read more

Published by: Daily Mail (UK)

Cornell develops beer-pouring robot that anticipates people's actions.

What’s better than as robot bartender that can pour you a beer? How about a robot waiter that can see you need a refill and comes over to pour you another one. Hema S. Koppula, a Cornell graduate student in computer science, and Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science are working at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab on just such a robot. Using a PR-2 robot, they've programmed it to not only carry out everyday tasks, but to anticipate human behavior and adjust its actions... read more

Published by: Gizmag

'Robot, Pour Me a Beer!' Scientists Program Robot to Anticipate Needs.

Call it one small beer for man, one giant leap for successful robotics engineering. The robot scientist utilized a common household piece of technology as the "eyes" of the robot: a Microsoft Kinect 3-D camera, a $100 add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360 game console. (Microsoft, along with U.S. Army Research Office, the Alfred E. Sloan Foundation, financed the project)... read more

Published by: Nature World News

Personal robot.

May 29, 2013

Published by: Mobile Magazine

Beer-pouring Robot Anticipates Human Actions.

ITHACA, N.Y. – A robot in Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab has learned to foresee human action in order to step in and offer a helping hand, or more accurately, roll in and offer a helping claw. Understanding when and where to pour a beer or knowing when to offer assistance opening a refrigerator door can be difficult for a robot because of the many variables it encounters while assessing the situation. A team from Cornell has created a solution... read more

Published by: Scientific Computing

Robot knows when to pour you a beer.

Thirsty for a cold brew? Now there's a robot that is learning how to keep your beer glass full. Researchers at Cornell University's Personal Robotics Lab have programmed a robot to anticipate human actions, and assist in tasks, like opening a refrigerator door or pouring a drink... read more

Published by: CBS News

Robot predicts your actions so it can help or pour.

Published by: NBC News

Robot Sees Into The Future To Pour You A Beer.

We've seen some pretty talented robot bartenders, but we still have to go to them for a drink. What kind of a future is this? Can't the robot come and pour us a beer by now? Sure! But that's not quite as easy as just having a robot walk (or roll) over and pour a beer into a glass. If you, say, move the glass at the last minute (not cool, dude, but okay), the robot could keep right on pouring. No, a great robot server needs to be able to look slightly into the future... read more

Published by: Popular Science

Precognitive robot knows you need help before you do.

A new robot developed by researchers at Cornell University isn't only capable of assisting you with tasks, it can accurately predict when you might need a hand. Armed with a Kinect sensor, the robot — developed by Ashutosh Saxena and his team of computer scientists — utilizes a dataset of 120 videos to analyze and understand your movements. It can then help you perform certain tasks including making a meal, stacking or arranging objects, or taking your medicine... read more

Published by: The Verge

Robot programmed to open fridge, pour beer.

A robot from Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab has been programmed to offer assistance to humans. Using an algorithm to predict future human behaviour, the robot can offer a helping hand... read more

Published by: Toronto Sun

New Robot Relies on Household Activities to Assist Folks.

As per reports, a new robot has been developed by scientists, which is capable of performing daily household tasks to help people. It employs Microsoft Kinect as a sensor. The team of scientists at the Cornell University learns from the movements of the people and makes the comparison of the same with videos in its database. Its database is loaded with the knowledge of about 120 common household tasks... read more

Published by: French Tribune

Our Top 10 Headlines Today: Beer-Pouring Robots, Jellyfish Fighting Global Warming…

Beer Pouring Robot Programmed to Anticipate Human Actions. “Scientists at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab equipped a robot with a camera and a database of 3-D videos to teach it to anticipate human actions. So if you reach for your mug when it’s getting ready to pour you a drink, it realizes that you might be about to move the mug—and then it waits until you’ve put it back before beginning to pour.” read more

Published by: National Geographics

Robot Knows When to Pour You a Beer.

A robot programmed by researchers at Cornell University can anticipate human actions and assist with tasks such as opening a refrigerator door or pouring a drink. The robot uses Microsoft Kinect and a database of three-dimensional videos to scan a room and identify what action is taking place... read more

Published by: ACM Technews

Thirsty for beer? There's a robot for that.

Move over C3PO, Cornell University computer science geeks have created a robot that can tell if you want a beer and pour it for you. Barristas also may want to wake up and smell the coffee too. This robot can guess whether students are hankering for java and pour it for them... read more

Published by: Los Angeles Times

Teaching a robot to anticipate human actions

Why can’t a robot be like a servant (to paraphrase My Fair Lady)? You know, one who would anticipate your every need — even before you asked?.. read more

Published by: KurzweilAI

Wish Granted: This Robot Knows When to Pour You a Brewski.

The road to a sentient machine intelligence that eventually eats our minds and makes us wear black robes and Silhouette shades and fight Hugo Weaving long past the point of dramatic sanity is fraught with other perils — like a robot that not only pours you a beer, but “knows” not to if you start slopping your glass around... read more

Published by: Time Magazine

Video systems enable robot to anticipate human behaviour

A robot in Cornell University’s Personal Robotics Lab has learned to predict human action in order to step in and offer to help. Understanding when and where to pour a drink or knowing when to offer assistance opening a door can be difficult for a robot because of the many variables it encounters while assessing the situation but a team from Cornell believes it has created a solution... read more

Published by: The Engineer (UK)

Xbox One should accelerate development of learning robots.

Ashutosh Saxena bought an Xbox to play computer games at home, but discovered that the Kinect motion-detection technology it includes provides a rich tool for his robotics lab where he's trying to create robots that learn what humans are up to and try to help out... read more

Published by: NetworkWorld

Teaching Robots to Anticipate Human Actions.

Even the most advanced bots are confounded by the diverse environments where humans live and work. But if a robot can navigate only a well-ordered lab, what practical use is it?.. read more

Published by: National Geographics

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Published by: KVUE News (ABC)

Robot bartender can read your mind: Machine can anticipate human behavior.

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Published by: FoxNews.com

Meet the Robot That Pours You a Beer.

A robot designed at Cornell anticipates whether you need a refill on your drink, and then pours it for you. Cornell computer science assistant professor Ashutosh Saxena joins digits. Photo: Robot Learning Lab, Cornell University... read more

Published by: The Wall Street Journal (WSJ)

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Published by: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Highly Observant Robots (Radio)

A good assistant can learn a lot about a job just by watching. Now, computer scientists at Cornell University are designing robots that can do the same thing. Team leader Ashutosh Saxena says their robots can analyze how people use an object, like a plate or a water pitcher, and learn to handle it in similar ways. The robots also learn to apply rules based on the object’s function... read more

Published by: Science Update

Humanizing Robots.

September 14,2012

Published by: News India Times

Will the Elderly Ever Accept Care From Robots?

Early in the new science-fiction film Robot & Frank (opening Aug. 17 in New York and Aug. 24 elsewhere), Frank, an elderly man, gets a visit from his son, Hunter. Worried about his father's apparent decline, Hunter takes a gift out of the back of his car: a white robot with a humanlike body and a polite speaking voice. The machine, Hunter promises, will keep his dad healthy and focused—and the house clean. Frank’s not so sure: "That thing's going to kill me in my sleep," he worries. But before long, the "health care" robot is cooking his meals, planting a garden, and planning activities to keep his human overlord occupied... read more

Published by: Slate Magazine

For help in old age, how about a new age of robots?

Early in the new science-fiction film "Robot & Frank," Frank, an elderly man, gets a visit from his son, Hunter. Worried about his father's apparent decline, Hunter takes a gift out of the back of his car: a white robot with a humanlike body and a polite speaking voice. The machine, Hunter promises, will keep his dad healthy and focused -- and the house clean. Frank is not so sure, though: "That thing's going to kill me in my sleep," he worries... read more

Published by: Herald-Tribune

Robots may play big role in elder care.

Early in the new science-fiction film "Robot & Frank" (opening Aug. 24), Frank, an elderly man, gets a visit from his son, Hunter. Worried about his father's apparent decline, Hunter takes a gift out of the back of his car: a white robot with a humanlike body and a polite speaking voice... read more

Published by: Arizona Daily Star

Will elderly embrace robot health care?

Early in the new science-fiction film "Robot & Frank" (opened Friday in New York, opens Aug. 24 elsewhere), Frank, an elderly man, gets a visit from his son, Hunter. Worried about his father's apparent decline, Hunter takes a gift out of the back of his car: a white robot with a humanlike body and a polite speaking voice. The machine, Hunter promises, will keep his dad healthy and focused — and the house clean. Frank's not so sure: "That thing's going to kill me in my sleep," he worries. But before long, the "health care" robot is cooking his meals, planting a garden and planning activities to keep his human overlord occupied... read more

Published by: San Jose Mercury News

'Hallucinating' robots arrange rooms to suit human needs.

If you hire a robot to help you move into your new apartment, you won't have to send out for pizza. But you will have to give the robot a system for figuring out where things go. The best approach, according to Cornell researchers, is to ask "How will humans use this?" Researchers in the Personal Robotics Lab of Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, have already taught robots to identify common objects, pick them up and place them stably in appropriate locations. Now they've added the human element by teaching robots to "hallucinate" where and how humans might stand, sit or work in a room, and place objects in their usual relationship to those imaginary people... read more

Published by: Scientific Computing

'Hallucinating' robots arrange objects for human use.

Researchers in the Personal Robotics Lab of Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, have already taught robots to identify common objects, pick them up and place them stably in appropriate locations. Now they've added the human element by teaching robots to "hallucinate" where and how humans might stand, sit or work in a room, and place objects in their usual relationship to those imaginary people... read more

Published by: PhysOrg

'Hallucinating' Robots Arrange Rooms to Suit Human Needs.

Cornell University researchers have taught robots to "hallucinate" where and how humans might stand, sit, or work in a room, and place objects in their usual relationship to those imaginary people. The researchers say that relating objects to people minimizes mistakes and makes computation easier because each object is described in terms of its relationship to a small set of human poses, instead of to the long list of other objects in a scene. The robot calculates the distance of objects from various parts of the imagined human figures and notes the orientation of the objects... read more

Published by: ACM Technews

Getting 'hallucinating' robots to arrange your room for you.

When we last (virtually) visited the Personal Robotics Lab of Ashutosh Saxena, Cornell assistant professor of computer science, we learned that they’ve taught robots to pick up after you, while you sit around and watch Futurama. But why stop there in your search for the ultimate slave robot? Now they’ve taught robots where in a room you might stand, sit, or work, and to place objects by “hallucinating” imaginary people — no word if psilocybin is involved... read more

Published by: KurzweilAI

Robots to arrange rooms according to your needs.

Robots are pretty handy devices to own, but perhaps here is something that you might want to take note for the future. Researchers who currently spend the better part of their day in the Personal Robotics Lab, are working hard to include the human element into robots by teaching them to “hallucinate” – or rather, to think of just how humans might stand, sit or work within a given space of a room. Not only that, it will also help them think on behalf of their human superiors as to how objects are placed just the way humans would want to... read more

Published by: Ubergizmo

'Hallucinating' Robots Arrange Rooms to Suit Human Needs.

If you hire a robot to help you move into your new apartment, you won't have to send out for pizza. But you will have to give the robot a system for figuring out where things go. The best approach, according to Cornell researchers, is to ask "How will humans use this?".. read more

Published by: Lab Manager

How to use robots in interior design.

We've seen how architects hope to use robots to fabricate buildings, but are there other applications for the machines in design? In Wired Design, Joseph Flaherty highlights two examples of robots in the world of interior design. Meanwhile, at Cornell University, a professor is teaching robots how to organize rooms... read more

Published by: Smart Planet

Hallucinating Robots Make the Best Interior Designers.

We humans are already kind of afraid of robots, so here's a good idea: what if we make them trip balls and hallucinate imaginary people everywhere? Seems like it would drive them to madness and make them turn on us even faster, but researchers at Cornell University's Robot Learning Lab think it will make them better at their jobs... read more

Published by: Gizmodo

Cornell Teaching Robots to Use Their Imaginations When Organizing Your Stuff.

Robots are already capable of using known relationships to organize objects in a home or office, but those relationships are between objects themselves, not objects and humans. This is a problem, since most of the stuff that needs to be organized in homes and offices is designed to be structured in such a way that humans can interact with it. Ashutosh Saxena's lab at Cornell is teaching robots to use their imaginations a little bit, to try and picture how we'd want them to organize our lives... read more

Published by: IEEE Spectrum

Smart as a bird: Flying rescue robot will autonomously avoid obstacles.

Cornell researchers have created an autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles. Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations. Small flying machines are already common, and GPS technology provides guidance. Now, Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, and his team are tackling the hard part: how to keep the vehicle from slamming into walls and tree branches. Human controllers can't always react swiftly enough, and radio signals may not reach everywhere the robot goes... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Indian-American scientist Ashutosh Saxena designs smart flying robot.

Washington, Oct 31 : Indian-American computer scientist Ashutosh Saxena and his team at Cornell University have created a flying robot as smart as any bird, with a tremendous potential in search-and-rescue operations, they said. Designed by Saxena, assistant professor at Cornell, the flying robot, the size of a card table is able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings... read more

Published by: Newsreporter

Indian-American designs smart flying robot.

Washington : Indian-American computer scientist Ashutosh Saxena and his team at Cornell University have created a flying robot as smart as any bird, with a tremendous potential in search-and-rescue operations, they said. Designed by Saxena, assistant professor at Cornell, the flying robot, the size of a card table is able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings... read more

Published by: TwoCircles.net

A flying robot to help in search-and-rescue operations.

Indian-American computer scientist Ashutosh Saxena and his team at Cornell University have created a flying robot as smart as any bird, with a tremendous potential in search-and-rescue operations, they said... read more

Published by: NDTV Gadgets

Flying robot navigates for itself.

Cornell researchers have created an autonomous flying robot that they say can maneuver around obstacles as efficiently as a bird. Developed with funding from DARPA, the researchers say it could be of great value in search-and-rescue operations thanks to its ability to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings... read more

Published by: TG Daily

Now, smart-flying robot that avoids obstacles.

Washington: An autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to manoeuvring around obstacles has been developed by an Indian-origin scientist and his colleagues. Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations, researchers say... read more

Published by: Zee News

Now, smart-flying robot that avoids obstacles.

An autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to manoeuvring around obstacles has been developed by an Indian-origin scientist and his colleagues. Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations, researchers say... read more

Published by: The Indian Epress

Flying Neural Net Avoids Obstacles.

Quadrotors do some impressive things, but so far they haven't managed the trick of flying free and avoiding obstacles. Now we have a quadrotor that can do just this and using only a standard video camera... read more

Published by: I-Programmer

Vision-based obstacle avoidance for autonomous MAVs

Development of small flying machines able to patrol recon or search and rescue missions has been around for a while now. While small flying machines which use GPS in order to find their way to their destination are already common, there is a need for development of other systems which enable maneuvering around obstacles in situations when or where GPS isn’t available. Researchers from Cornell University recently presented a solution which could be employed for autonomous flying robots... read more

Published by: Robaid

DARPA Quadrotor Autonomously Avoids Obstacles During Flight.

Researchers at Cornell University have developed an autonomous flying robot drone that maneuvering around obstacles as a bird would. The project was funded by DARPA. Guiding itself through forests, tunnels or damaged buildings, the quadrotor robot could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations... read more

Published by: 33rd Square

Flying robot avoids obstacles.

Researchers have created an autonomous flying robot which is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles; able to guide itself through forests, tunnels, or damaged buildings, the machine could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations. Cornell researchers have created an autonomous flying robot which is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles... read more

Published by: Homeland security newswire

An autonomous flying robot that avoids obstacles.

Able to guide itself through forests, tunnels, or damaged buildings, an autonomous flying robot developed by Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, and his team could have tremendous value in search-and-rescue operations, according to the researchers... read more

Published by: KurzweilAI

Autonomous Aerial Robot Maneuvers Like a Bird.

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a flying robot they say is “as smart as a bird” because it can maneuver to avoid obstacles. They say it eventually could be used in search-and-rescue operations because of its ability to maneuver through forests, tunnels or inside damaged buildings... read more

Published by: Voice of America

Algorithms Allow MAVs to Avoid Obstacles with Single Camera and Neuromorphic Hardware

Yesterday, we posted about some dirt cheap micro air vehicles on Kickstarter. Cheap hardware is great, but to make it do cool stuff, you usually need expensive (or at least, very clever) software. Researchers at Cornell have come up with a way to enable robotic aircraft to navigate around outdoor obstacles using just a single camera and hardware that mimics neuron architecture... read more

Published by: IEEE Spectrum

Bird brained robot flies outdoors without crashing trees.

Published by: NBC News

Smart as a Bird: Flying Rescue Robot Will Autonomously Avoid Obstacles.

November 7, 2012

Drone that can dodge obstacles developed by US scientists.

An unmanned drone that can avoid obstacles without human input has been developed by US scientists. Until now, the flying robots have always needed a human at the controls to operate them remotely and prevent them from crashing. Now, however, researchers at New York's Cornell University have managed to develop software that will help drones to dodge obstacles. read more

Published by: The Telegraph

Saxena's Microsoft fellowship to enhance personal robots.

Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, has been named one of seven Microsoft Research Faculty Fellows for 2012. The award includes funding of $200,000 over two years to expand his effort to develop "personal robots" that can take over mundane household tasks and assist the elderly and disabled... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Published by: Ithaca Journal

Microsoft fellowship will aid personal robots research.

Published by: IndiaWest

Cornell researchers create robot to assist elderly, disabled.

June 2012

Published by: Ithaca Journal

Robot Maid Cleans Up After Your Mess.

Robots could soon play maid and butler in homes, with a droid now programmed to scan a messy room, identify all items, figure out where they belong and put them back in place. Such robots also could help pack warehouses and clean up auto repair shops, researchers say... read more

Published by: Live Science

Robot smart enough to clean your room (but not to have excuse to get out of it).

May 23, 2012

Published by: NBC News

A Robot Learns How to Tidy Up After You.

Cornell University researchers have developed a robot that can survey a room, identify all its objects, and determine where they belong and put them away. "Our major contribution is that we are now looking at a group of objects, and this is the first work that places objects in non-trivial places," says Cornell professor Ashutosh Saxena. The robot's algorithms enable it to consider the nature of an object in deciding what to do with it. In testing, the robot was as much as 98 percent successful in identifying and placing objects it had seen before. First the robot surveys the room with a Microsoft Kinect three-dimensional camera. Various images are combined to create a general perspective view of the room, which the robot's computer splits into blocks according to discontinuities of color and shape... read more

Published by: ACM Technews

The Pill: For Men!: DNews Nuggets.

A Very Tidy Robot: Guests are arriving in 20 minutes, you're not dressed and the place is a mess. Tidy robot to the rescue! Researchers in Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab have outfitted a robot with algorithms that enable it to survey a messy room and figure out what goes where — a place for everything and everything in its place. Well, almost. The robot was up to 98 percent successful in identifying and placing objects it had seen before in the right place... read more

Published by: Discovery News

Robot knows shoes don’t go in the fridge.

CORNELL (US) — A robot has been trained to look around a room, identify everything in it, figure out where the items belong, and put them away in the right place. Previous work has dealt with a robot placing single objects on a flat surface, says Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University. “Our major contribution is that we are now looking at a group of objects, and this is the first work that places objects in non-trivial places.”.. read more

Published by: Futurity

A robot learns how to tidy up after you.

Sooner than you think, we may have robots to tidy up our homes. Researchers in Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong and put them away... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

A robot learns how to tidy up after you.

Researchers in Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong and put them away. Their new algorithms -- the underlying methods a computer is programmed to follow -- for identifying and placing objects are described in the May online edition of the International Journal of Robotics, and some aspects of the work were presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation May 14 -- 18 in St. Paul, Minn... read more

Published by: PhysOrg

A robot learns how to tidy up after you.

Sooner than you think, we may have robots to tidy up our homes. Researchers in Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong and put them away... read more

Published by: MyScience

Method allows robot to learn and apply grasping skills.

Cornell researchers claim to have developed a new algorithm that allows a robot to learn complex grasping skills from experience and to apply them in new situations. Inspired by the ‘universal jamming gripper’ created in the lab of Hod Lipson, associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science, the new method is
‘hardware agnostic’, according to the researchers, and will work with any type of robot gripper... read more

Published by: The Engineer (UK)

General sciences teaching robots to use the universal gripper.

Published by: R&D magazine

A robot learns how to tidy up after you.

Researchers in Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong and put them away. Their new algorithms -- the underlying methods a computer is programmed to... read more

Published by: World news

A robot that learns how to tidy up after you.

Researchers at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong, and put them away. Bingo! “This is the first work that places objects in non-trivial places,” said Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science... read more

Published by: KurzweilAI

A robot learns how to tidy up after you.

Sooner than you think, we may have robots to tidy up our homes. Researchers in Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong and put them away... read more

Published by: Science blog

Cornell Researchers Develop Humanoid Robots.

Cornell Personal Robotics Lab researchers have programmed a robot to navigate across a room, followed by detecting the objects and bringing them to their actual location. For this operation, the robots have been programmed based on new algorithms that are being described in the International Journal of Robotics’ May online edition. Also, certain features of the work were presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St. Paul, Minn , from May 14 to 18... read more

Published by: AzoRobotics

Robot Smart Enough To Clean Your Room.

A robot that can survey a room, identify all of the objects in it and where they belong, and then put them away, has been trained by researchers in Cornell’s Personal Robotics Lab. There are already robots smart enough to scoop poop, fold towels, and pour beer, but the new robot, programmed at Cornell, puts all of those to shame, according to Science Blog... read more

Published by: The Inquisitr

Robots learn to pick up oddly shaped objects.

When Cornell engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robot, like the ones we may someday have helping around the home or office, would need a new kind of programming. So they have developed a procedure -- an algorithm -- that allows a robot to learn grasping skills from experience and apply them in new situations... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Robots learn to pick up oddly shaped objects.

When Cornell engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robot, like the ones we may someday have helping around the home or office, would need a new kind of programming. So they have developed a procedure -- an algorithm -- that allows a robot to learn grasping skills from experience and apply them in new situations... read more

Published by: PhysOrg

Algorithm That Improves A Robot's Grasping Skills.

Now get ready for a robot whose experience on earlier situations shall guide it on what to do in new situations. Cornell Researchers have come up with a new algorithm which, in their own words, lets the robot acquire skills from its past experience... read more

Published by: Crazy Engineers

Method allows robot to learn and apply grasping skills.

Cornell researchers claim to have developed a new algorithm that allows a robot to learn complex grasping skills from experience and to apply them in new situations. Inspired by the ‘universal jamming gripper’ created in the lab of Hod Lipson, associate professor of mechanical engineering and computer science, the new method is‘hardware agnostic’, according to the researchers, and will work with any type of robot gripper... read more

Published by: The Engineer (UK)

Robots Learn to Pick Up Oddly Shaped Objects.

When Cornell engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robot, like the ones we may someday have helping around the home or office, would need a new kind of programming... read more

Published by: Iran Daily

Robot gripper teaches itself how to pick up different shaped objects.

Cornell engineers have developed a revolutionary new robot gripper that can teach itself to pick up all sorts of oddly shaped objects, an ability most autonomous robots lack. The whole idea was inspired by the universal jamming gripper, which has proven capable of grasping various objects, ranging from darts to salad tongs, with stability and ease. Combined with this new approach, there are now very few items out there that the robot gripper cannot pick up... read more

Published by: Hearst Electronic Products

Teaching robots to pick up oddly shaped objects.

The use of robots in military and first response missions is growing. In some of these missions, however, robots need more flexibility and dexterity than is currently available. Researchers offer encouraging news on this front. When Cornell engineers developed a new type of robot hand that could pick up oddly shaped objects, it presented a challenge: It was easy for a human operator to choose the best place to take hold of an object, but an autonomous robot, like the ones we may someday have helping around the home, office, or in the field, would need a new kind of programming... read more

Published by: Homeland security newswire

Robots Learn to Pick Up Oddly Shaped Objects.

Cornell University researchers have developed a algorithm that enables a robot to learn grasping skills from experience and apply them to new situations. The gripper consists of a flexible bag filled with granular material. As the bag settles on an object it deforms to fit around it, then air is sucked out of the bag, causing the granules to pull together and tighten the grip... read more

Published by: Communications of the ACM

Google, Yahoo and General Electric look for tech breakthroughs at Cornell.

ITHACA -- The BOOM competition at Cornell is a little like a science fair from high school except instead of a baking soda volcanoes, Cornell students demonstrated their own personal robot that can interact, roam the campus and pack boxes... read more

Published by: CNYcentral.com

Robots learn to handle objects, understand places.

Similarly, your personal robot in the future will need the ability to generalize -- for example, to handle your particular set of dishes and put them in your particular dishwasher. In Cornell's Personal Robotics Laboratory, a team led by Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, is teaching robots to manipulate objects and find their way around in new environments. They reported two examples of their work at the 2011 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference June 27 at the University of Southern California... read more

Published by: PhysOrg

Ultimate Put-Downs: Cornell Lab Teaches Robots That Perfect Placement Prevents Possible Problems.

Newswise — ITHACA, N.Y – For robots, picking up objects is easy, but putting them down – in proper context – is not so simple. Researchers at Cornell’s Personal Robotics Laboratory, led by Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, has found that placing objects for robots is harder because there are many options. Drinking cups, for example, go upright when placed on a table, but must be placed upside down in a dishwasher... read more

Published by: Newswise

Robot washes dishes does chores.

Published by: Cornell Daily Sun

Infants a model for robots?

Washington: Now, coming soon a robot which will easily find their way round in new environments and manipulate objects - for example, it would be able to handle a particular set of dishes and put them in a particular rack, thanks to an Indian-origin scientist-led team. "Robots still have a long way to go to learn like humans. We would be really happy if we could build a robot that would even act like a six-month-old baby," said Professor Ashutosh Saxena who is leading the team at Cornell University... read more

Published by: Zee News

Robots Being Trained to Understand Handling of Objects.

Just like the infants, researchers want the robots also to understand the nature of objects and their utilization on their own. Ashutosh Saxena at Cornell University Personal Robotics Lab and his team are working on making the robots understand the objects around them handle them according to their understanding so that they get adapted to the environment... read more

Published by: News Tonight

Robots Learn to Handle Objects, Understand New Places.

A team from Cornell University's Personal Robotics Laboratory is teaching a robot to find its way around new environments and manipulate objects, and machine learning is a key part of the project. "We just show the robot some examples and it learns to generalize the placing strategies and applies them to objects that were not seen before," says team leader and professor Ashutosh Saxena. "It learns about stability and other criteria for good placing for plates and cups, and when it sees a new object--a bowl--it applies them." The robot placed a plate, mug, martini glass, bowl, candy cane, disc, spoon, and tuning fork on a flat surface, on a hook, in a stemware holder, in a pen holder, and on several different dish racks... read more

Published by: ACM Technews

Robots use Kinect to understand our world.

Picture the scene, a few years from now. "Robot, fetch me that pillow over there," you say to your ever-willing butlerbot. "Certainly sir," it replies. "What's a pillow?" Hema Koppula and Abhishek Anand at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, hope to avoid this disappointing scenario by teaching robots to understand the context of their surroundings so that they can pick out individual objects in a room. "We have developed an algorithm that learns to identify the objects in home and office scenes," explains Koppula... read more

Published by: New Scientist

Robots Use Kinect to Understand Our World.

Cornell University researchers are teaching robots to understand the context of their surroundings so that they can pick out individual objects in a room. "We have developed an algorithm that learns to identify the objects in home and office scenes," says Cornell's Hema Koppula, who is conducting the research with Abhishek Anand. The key to the system is Microsoft's Kinect sensor, which works with the algorithm to recognize particular objects by studying images labeled with descriptive tags such as "wall," "floor," and "tabletop." The researchers used 27 labels, 10 each for office and home scenes and seven that applied to both... read more

Published by: ACM Technews

Teaching robots to identify human activities.

Published by: R&D magazine

Researchers teach robots to recognize what we're doing.

If we someday live in "smart houses" or have personal robots to help around the home and office, they will need to be aware of what humans are doing. You don't remind grandpa to take his arthritis pills if you already saw him taking them -- and robots need the same insight... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Teaching robots to identify human activities.

So Cornell researchers are programming robots to identify human activities by observation. Their most recent work will be described at the 25th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in San Francisco, in an Aug. 7 workshop on "plan, activity and intent recognition." Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, and his research team report that they have trained a robot to recognize 12 different human activities, including brushing teeth, drinking water, relaxing on a couch and working on a computer. The work is part of Saxena's overall research on personal robotics... read more

Published by: PhysOrg

Kinect-based system developed that recognizes what you're doing.

When and if we ever do get our personal robot assistants, it would be nice to think that we could "be ourselves" in front of them, doing things such as scratching our butts or checking our deodorant - because they're just robots, right? They're not going to know what we're doing. Well ... thanks to research currently being conducted at Cornell University, there's already a Microsoft Kinect system that can correctly identify people's activities, based on observation of their movements. If such technology were incorporated into a robot, it's possible that it could admonish you for chewing with your mouth open - although more likely, it might offer to help you lift a heavy object... read more

Published by: Gizmag

Robot Learning class foreshadows personal robots.

Robot Learning class foreshadows personal robots. Someday you may have a personal robot to help around the house. It will move smoothly from room to room, avoiding obstacles, people and pets. It will pack your suitcases, clear the table and do the dishes. It might even be programmed to assign chores to the kids or wait for the cable guy. We might see such appliances first as assistants for the disabled and elderly... read more

Published by: Scientific Computing

Robot Learning class foreshadows personal robots.

Someday you may have a personal robot to help around the house. It will move smoothly from room to room, avoiding obstacles, people and pets. It will pack your suitcases, clear the table and do the dishes. It might even be programmed to assign chores to the kids or wait for the cable guy. We might see such appliances first as assistants for the disabled and elderly... read more

Published by: ECN

Cornell Student Project Grants a Peek at the Future of Robotics.

With robotics becoming a more widely accept subsection of engineering, many universities are offering programs that prepare their students for careers in the quickly evolving field. Recently at Cornell, students of the robotics program were tasked with the development of a personal robots designed to handle a certain job. The results offered a diverse array of robots each with a unique approach to the objective... read more

Published by: RobotX world

Student' robots fly, roll, talk and learn to be useful.

Someday you may have a personal robot to help around the house. It will move smoothly from room to room, avoiding obstacles, people and pets. It will pack your suitcases, clear the table and do the dishes. It might even be programmed to assign chores to the kids or wait for the cable guy. We might see such appliances first as assistants for the disabled and elderly... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Robot Learning exhibition - Spring 2011.

Students in Ashutosh Saxena's Robot Learning course demonstrated their work May 17, 2011 in the Duffield Atrium. The students presented an array of small projects, each demonstrating the ability to perform one special task, from a robot that can pack and close a box, to one that can solicit help from humans... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Cornell University Students Present Array of Small Personalized Robots

Students displayed a wide range of small robots. Each robot exhibits the ability to carry out a specific task. Saxena explained that industrial robots can be configured to perform only a single task in a repeated manner, but a personal robot is required to learn from its surroundings and function accordingly. Cornell’s robots are called Polar, according to Saxena, which stands for PersOnaL Assistant Robot. Since their symbol is a bear, the robots are named Polar, Panda and Blue... read more

Published by: AzoRobotics

Robo-Jeeves finds and folds your crumpled shirts.

SIMPLE as they seem, many routine domestic chores are still a big problem for robots. Fetching a beer from the fridge may be within a robot's grasp, but ask it to clear up a messy bedroom and it will be stumped. To a robot, a crumpled pair of trousers can look much like a discarded T-shirt, and it will struggle to tell a fluffy slipper from a sleeping cat... read more

Published by: New Scientist

The New Roboticists.

Published by: Cornell Engineering

Students show off their flying, sensing, dishwasher-loading robots in Duffield Hall atrium.

A glimpse into the technological future was on display in Duffield Hall atrium May 18, where 23 teams of students showcased their sensing, grasping and flying robots for the public... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

Robots could improve everyday life at home or work.

They're mundane, yet daunting tasks: Tidying a messy room. 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 is working to bring such robots into homes and offices... read more

Published by: Cornell Chronicle

'Helper' Robots seen within 10 years.

Published by: Globe-Democrat.com

Everyday Robot Helpers Could be Affordable in a Decade Or Less.

They're mundane, yet daunting tasks: Tidying a messy room. Assembling a bookshelf from a kit of parts. Fetching a hairbrush for someone who can't do it herself... read more

Published by: Communications of the ACM

'Helper' robots seen within 10 years.

ITHACA, N.Y., Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Robots capable of helping people with everyday tasks could be available and affordable within 10 years, a U.S. researcher predicts... read more

Published by: UPI

US: Indian scientist developing robots to improve daily life.

Washington: What if a robot could do all those mundane work for you? Well, this could soon be a reality, as an Indian-American scientist is developing such intelligent robots which he claimed could help people with their everyday task. Ashutosh Saxena, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University in the US, is working to bring robots into homes and offices that can clean up a messy room, assemble a flat-pack bookcase or unload a dishwasher, all without human intervention... read more

Published by: NDTV

Affordable robots in just 10 years!

Washington: Tidying a messy room is an everyday thing, but daunting chore. But soon, you could buy yourself a robot that would do all such tasks for you. Cornell University Assistant Professor of Computer Science Ashutosh Saxena and his colleagues are working at Cornell`s Personal Robotics Lab, which develops software for complex, high-level robotics... read more

Published by: Zee News

Cornell Creates Technology Future.

Ithaca, NY (WBNG Binghamton) - Cornell University is developing the technology of tomorrow. Students and professors are joining together to create smarter electronics that range from robots to microscopic x-ray machines... read more

Published by: CBS WBNG Action News

Physics of the Impossible: How to build Intelligent Robots.

January 19, 10pm EST, 2010.

Published by: Science Channel

3-D Modeling Advance: A single photo can be reconstructed into a 3-D scene with Make3D.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a Web service called Make3D that lets users turn a single two-dimensional image of an outdoor scene into an immersive 3-D model. This gives users the ability to easily create a more realistic visual representation of a photo–one that lets viewers fly around the scene... read more

Published by: MIT Technology Review

Make3D wandelt Fotos in dreidimensionale Aufnahmen um.

Forscher an der Stanford University haben einen neuen Web-Dienst entwickelt, mit dem Nutzer sich in kurzer Zeit aus zweidimensionalen Außenaufnahmen ein 3D-Modell fertigen lassen können. So soll es möglich werden, eine realistischere visuelle Repräsentation eines Standbildes zu schaffen – und zwar so, dass sie der Zuseher sogar "durchfliegen" kann, berichtet das Technologiemagazin Technology Review in seiner Online-Ausgabe... read more

Published by: Heise Germany

Make3D turns your vacation photos into 3D worlds.

Ever wish you could recreate the effect of those neat multilens 3D cameras without having to buy the hardware? Lucky for you there's some cool 3D technology coming out of Stanford called Make3D. The service uses machine learning to go over your photograph and recreate depth and perspective in three dimensions... read more

Published by: CNet

Stanford researchers figure out how to hang a picture inside your home video.

Suppose you have a cherished home video, taken at your birthday party. You're fond of the video, but your viewing experience is marred by one small, troubling detail. There in the video, framed and hanging on the living room wall amidst the celebration, is a color photograph of your former significant other... read more

Published by: Stanford University

Extreme Makeover: Photos Realistically Embedded Within Videos.

Suppose you have a cherished home video, taken at your birthday party. You're fond of the video, but your viewing experience is marred by one small, troubling detail. There in the video, framed and hanging on the living room wall amidst the celebration, is a color photograph of your former significant other... read more

Published by: Science Daily

Published by: Home Cinema Choice (UK)

Scientists Create Easier Way To Embed Objects Into Video.

"Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it. It works for videos as well — you can play a video on a wall inside your video.".. read more

Published by: Slashdot

Embed Ads In User-Generated Videos With ZunaVision.

During the U.S. presidential elections, one of the campaigning methods which got a lot of attention was President-Elect Obama's in-game billboard ad inserted into the Xbox 360 racing game, Burnout Paradise. Now a similar technology for embedding images is making its way into online, user-gen video. Instead of pre-rolls, post-rolls, or overlays, this technology allows for inserted images to be rendered onto any planar surface in a video, whether wall, floor, or ceiling. Oh, and they don't have to be images, either - the technology supports embedding videos within your videos, too... read more

Published by: New York Times

Extreme makeover: Computer science edition.

Suppose you have a cherished home video, taken at your birthday party. You're fond of the video, but your viewing experience is marred by one small, troubling detail. There in the video, framed and hanging on the living room wall amidst the celebration, is a color photograph of your former significant other... read more

Published by: EurekAlert

Embedding video ads within video.

The sign on the brick wall is not really there. Neither is the sign on a fast moving boat. They were added with a new kind of special effect. What's behind this wall? Let's use a magic window to see through it. Well, actually, it's not magic at all; it's just a blue screen. Filmmakers have used this for special effects for years... read more

Published by: ABC 7

Moving image.

A group of Stanford University researchers specialising in artificial intelligence have developed an algorithm that makes it possible to embed photographs into video. The researchers, computer science graduate students Ashutosh Saxena and Siddharth Batra, and Andrew Ng, an assistant professor, see great potential for the technology they are calling ZunaVision... read more

Published by: The Engineer (UK)

Extreme Makeover: Computer Science Edition.

Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it It works for videos as well - you can play a video on a wall inside your video. The technology can cheaply do some of the tricks normally performed by expensive commercial editing systems... view video

Published by: Youtube

Getting a Grip: Building the Ultimate Robotic Hand.

Issue 15.12, Dec 2007.

Published by: Wired

Robot Hands Get a Grip on the Future.

Sep 20, 2008.

Published by: Wired

Brainy Robots Start Stepping Into Daily Life.

Robot cars drive themselves across the desert, electronic eyes perform lifeguard duty in swimming pools and virtual enemies with humanlike behavior battle video game players... read more

Published by: New York Times

Learning to Grasp Novel Objects.

We consider the problem of grasping novel objects, specifically ones that are being seen for the first time through vision. Supervised learning techniques have been utilized to train a robot to grasp both previously seen and novel objects. Here we present learning algorithms that given the image of an object, predict the gripper configuration for grasping. The configuration can be represented as a single point... read more

Published by: Robot Learning Lab

Why a robot is better with one eye than two.

MOST robots are horribly short-sighted. Beyond a few metres, everything in their field of vision merges into the background, so that instead of steering a smooth path through the landscape they bumble around from one obstacle to the next... read more

Published by: New Scientist

Robots will 'do housework'.

View video

Published by: BBC

The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements.

The quest for artificial intelligence (AI) begins with dreams { as all quests do. People have long imagined machines with human abilities { automata that move and devices that reason. Human-like machines are described in many stories and are pictured in sculptures, paintings, and drawings... read more

Published by: Stanford University

Robot Car. In John Fowler's Cutting Edge (KTVU News). 5 pm, Dec 13, 2005.