Nothing to see here, folks. Let’s keep moving along…
Look, there’s a lot of thing that I take for granted: that Xbox 360 Slim in the living room, my ability to get dressed in the morning and also the fact that rarely does a robot ever need to help me with either of the aforementioned. But I’m young and arrogant, so surely things will never change. Just in case they do though, researchers at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, in Japan, have developed a robot that can help you get dressed in the morning. The bot uses motion capture dots to aid during reinforced learning sessions; various attempts to pull a shirt over a mannequin’s head and shoulders. Each time the robot screws up, it’s able to stop itself and reattempt the movement through a refined technique. The hope is that someday this technology can help aid the elderly or disabled, without popping their heads off like dandelions.
Not for nothing, this beast is still terrifying: on the first attempt, the robot kinda’ strangles the dummy as it attempts to put a shirt on it. Our second time around, the bot leaves the figure with a sort of ninja head wrap (which is actually pretty awesome) -but sure enough, on that third try, we finally get a tee shirt over that doll’s upper torso. Bravo technology!
Video after the jump:
[via theVerge]