Gadgetory

this is maybe one of my favorite robot demos ever it's a robotic sushi waiter it's the creation of Silicon Valley startup Willow Garage they're dreaming up how and why we'll use robots in the future that was so sparked it's really you know I've been taking my digital dexterity for granted was it your goal to create that future where Rosie from the Jetsons is actually occurring well our goal was to get robots out of factories from behind the cages and factories where they could help people whether that's having a bot to shoot pool with one that can fetch you a beer from the fridge or my personal favorite fold your laundry what is it that makes this robot do amazing things well it starts with how it sees the world so this is the the pr2 head and there you see a lot of sensors there's a high resolution video camera a couple of stereo pairs this is actually a projector that works with the stereo to give you better 3d images and then the Kinect is actually doing something very similar it's got uses infrared to project the texture in the world and then use that texture to also get 3d images and while the pr2 s are programmed to work autonomously they can also run via game controller this is amazing I look at dances there's a turbo there's a turbo button everybody back up now as cool as the pr2 robots are hardware is only half the story here Willow Garage is also developing an operating system that they've opened sourced so the hardware and its underlying software can work together to form the future of robotics it's open source right it's open source and so we've had about 160 interns visiting scholars from around the world come here for three to six months and then they've gone back home and they kind of take the software with them so they can program the robot to do things like clear a table pick up a set of clean dishes then yes even attempt to serve me sushi delicate I've either take a bow he's really like yes I did yes I did I did that boom so what's preventing us from having a robot in every home probably the price tag is a pretty big factor and how much do they cost the list price is $400,000 so it's expensive then of course there's the constant fear that robots will take over humankind but willow promised me otherwise this robot is not gonna take over the world you drop a 2x4 in front of it it's done for see that's what I like to hear I feel very reassured and reassured that my place was now set for a bite of sushi Bon Appetit you could kind of see why they call this restaurant yesterday is sushi cuz 35 minutes later or so I have my bowl my chopsticks and my slightly wilted food but I can definitely imagine the not-too-distant future where robots are servers and much more and I for one look forward to it