Robots are learning to cook by watching YouTube
Source: Lori Grisham
We may be inching a bit closer to living like The Jetsons.
Researchers at the University of Maryland have developed robotic systems that are learning to use cooking utensils by watching YouTube videos.
"We are trying to create a technology so that robots eventually can interact with humans," Cornelia Fermüller, an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, said in a statement.
On the 'The Jetsons' TV show set in the future, the family had a robot named Rosie (in blue) who cleaned the house and fixed food. (Photo: Hanna-Barbera)
The robots use computer vision software to identify objects, tools and hand movements in the cooking videos. That information is broken down into smaller chunks of simple actions that when combined together result in the robots performing complex actions, Yiannis Aloimonos, a professor of computer science and director of the university's Computer Vision Lab, told USA TODAY Network.
Aloimonos compared the process to that of creating a sentence. In this case, each chunk of information is a word and the robots learn the appropriate grammar to organize that information.
"For example, if you want to cut a cucumber, then first you have to grasp knife. Then you have to bring the knife to the cucumber. Then you have to do the cutting movement. Then you have to look to make sure that you cut and see two pieces," Aloimonos said.
These "cognitive robots" could be used in the future to perform any number of tasks that humans do today, but the researchers started with cooking because of the abundance of instructional videos online. Additionally, cooking requires a complex set of tools and actions, Aloimonos said.
While it might be too soon to throw out your cookbooks, the researchers have completed one dish.
"We have gone as far as a simple Greek salad because that involves tomatoes, cucumbers and olive oil and oregano and salt. So you have to do lots of not-so-trivial actions," he said.
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