Always forgetting everything? Robots rely on 'artificial memory' to help you find things

The robot Fetch used in the study.

Image source: University of Waterloo

Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, May 16 (Reporter Zhang Mengran) Engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have discovered a new way to program robots to help dementia patients find medicines, glasses, phones and other items they need but don’t know they have. Where to place items. Initial research focused on helping specific groups of people, but over time the technology evolved so that anyone could use it to find their misplaced items. The latest research paper has been published at the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.

Dementia is a disease that affects brain function and can lead to cognitive confusion, memory loss and disability. Many of these patients repeatedly forget the location of everyday items, which reduces their quality of life and places additional burden on caregivers.

Some engineers believe that if companion robots with episodic memory emerge, it could change that. They successfully used artificial intelligence to create a new type of "artificial memory." The research team started with a mobile manipulator robot named Fetch, which has a camera to sense the world around it. Then, using object detection algorithms, the researchers programmed the robot to detect, track and detect through stored video. Saves a memory log of a specific object in its camera view. The robot is able to distinguish between different objects, so it can record the time and location of when an object enters or leaves its field of view.

The researchers then developed a graphical interface that enables users to select the objects they want to track. After entering the object name and searching for them on a smartphone app or computer, the robot can indicate the last time it observed a specific object. time and place. Tests have shown that the system is very accurate.

Source: Science and Technology Daily

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