Toyota unveiled a robot that takes selfies while it completes cleaning tasks that most counterparts find complex. It coincidentally celebrated National Selfie Day, thus showcasing its new learned skill of taking a self-portrait while doing mundane chores.
SAN RAFAEL, CA - OCTOBER 01: A sign is displayed at Toyota Marin on October 1, 2013 in San Rafael, California. Monthly auto sales in the U.S. fell in September for the first time in three years as Toyota saw its overall sales drop 4.3% for the month.
The Toyota Research Institute flaunted the unnamed robot as the solution to common cyborg weakness of identifying shiny or reflective objects. As such, it makes simple cleaning tasks for humans complicated for robots, Engadget reported.
The difficulty in recognizing shiny objects has been a significant hurdle to their performance as most kitchenware at home is translucent and glossy. Just imagine if a cleaning robot stops and analyzes a simple glass of water for a long time. It might be better to clean yourself as it would be more efficient, which defeats the purpose.
Toyota's Robot Selfie Skill
Toyota attached a photo of the new cleaning robot in its press release. It wiped the table at a house using its left hand. With its other hand, it took a video of the chore it was completing.
It was not something out of this world. It is a skill that most humans have learned in the advent of social media. Now, people do their responsibilities while showing it to the folks on the internet.
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Toyota Robot and Complex Cleaning Tasks
The main objective of Toyota Research Institute was to boast how it has taught a robot to overcome complicated instances for most counterparts.
In the past, robots are not ideally responsible for clearing out tables due to their surface recognition limits. Toyota devised a training method for robots to understand more objects. It particularly helped in identifying the "3D geometry of the scene."
The programmers also installed vast synthetic data to train the new skill into the robot. With that, it can now move a glass of water or a toaster to wipe a tabletop clean. It no longer gets fooled by a mere reflection from a shiny object.
TOKYO-DECEMBER 3 : Yves Pepin, Producer/Show Director of "EXPO 2005 AICHI" poses next to the companies newly developed prototype of a rolling robot during a press conference at a preview for the upcoming "EXPO 2005 AICHI" at MEGA WEB Car Theme Park on December 3, 2004 in Tokyo, Japan. The robots, called "Toyota Partner Robots," will play musical instruments, and are mainly being developed for practical use in assisting people at home, offices, hospitals and factories.
Max Bajracharya, Vice President of Robotics of Toyota said that they arranged this endeavor not to replace humans completely. It is more of an attempt to complement the skills of humankind with "robotic capabilities."
It is not the first time that the Japanese carmaker got involved in producing robots. On May 26, 2016, Google sold its robotics division, Boston Dynamics, to Toyota.
Elsewhere, the Japanese giant debuted a robot that helped paralyzed people to walk again.
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Written by Teejay Boris
