Soon, a robot that can use nearby objects to its advantage

Robots are not yet able to interact with their environments as well as humans. Now, a research team led by Professor Mike Stilman at the Georgia Institute of Technology is developing a robot for US Navy that can overcome obstacles autonomously by using objects in its sorroundings.

"Our goal is to develop a robot that behaves like MacGyver, the television character from the 1980s who solved complex problems and escaped dangerous situations by using everyday objects and materials he found at hand," said Stilman, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech.

"We want to understand the basic cognitive processes that allow humans to take advantage of arbitrary objects in their environments as tools. We will achieve this by designing algorithms for robots that make tasks that are impossible for a robot alone possible for a robot with tools," Stilman said.

The research will build on Stilman's previous work on navigation among movable obstacles that enabled robots to autonomously recognise and move obstacles that were in the way of their getting from point A to point B.

"This project is challenging because there is a critical difference between moving objects out of the way and using objects to make a way," Stilman said in a statement.

To create a robot capable of using objects in its environment to accomplish a task, Stilman plans to develop an algorithm that will allow a robot to identify an arbitrary object in a room, determine the object's potential function, and turn that object into a simple machine that can be used to complete an action.

By providing the robot with basic knowledge of rigid body mechanics and simple machines, the robot should be able to autonomously determine the mechanical force properties of an object and construct motion plans for using the object to perform high-level tasks.

"Now that robotic systems are becoming more pervasive as teammates for warfighters in military operations, we must ensure that they are both intelligent and resourceful," said Paul Bello, director of the cognitive science programme in the Office of Naval Research.

"Professor Stilman's work on the 'MacGyver-bot' is the first of its kind, and is already beginning to deliver on the promise of mechanical teammates able to creatively perform in high-stakes situation," Bello said.