A team of American roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has designed a small wheeled robot that can open doors and drawers without prior instruction. The machine learns through trial and error to perform the necessary actions in real time. The study was published on: portal scientific publications arXiv.
Engineers equipped the device with a manipulator and loaded it with information about certain types of door handles and locks. The device was then sent to a testing area, where it was tasked with opening various doors and drawers.
Experiments showed that if the robot recognizes the type of pen, it immediately uses the available information to complete the task. If the system were unfamiliar to it, the machine would try to apply its knowledge of the working principles of other items to find a solution.
Scientists found that the system they created could open 95% of doors and containers if enough trials were made. In some cases, it took up to 30 minutes for the robot to choose the correct course of action.
Previous researchers was created A robot that can clean an unfamiliar house.