Researchers have developed a new search algorithm that would improve robot's ability to navigate and find tagged household objects.
Robots could "sense" what was around them through the use of small ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) tags. Inexpensive self-adhesive tags could be stuck on objects, allowing an RFID-equipped robot to search a room for the correct tag's signal, even when the object would be hidden out of sight.
Charlie Kemp, an associate professor in Georgia Tech's Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, said that RFID doesn't tell the robot where the object would be therefore they developed the algorithm.
The researchers equipped a PR2 robot with articulated, directionally sensitive antennas and a new algorithm that allows the robot to successfully find and navigate to the intended object.
The research has implications for future home robots and was particularly compelling for applications such as helping people with medicine, as RFID was able to provide precise identification information about an object or a person.
