Google Demos AI-Powered Soda-Fetching Robots
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making a lot of advancements and is being used for a variety of purposes. Alphabet Inc.’s Google is also leveraging this technology.
New robots
In its latest move, the company has combined the arms and eyes of physical robots with the conversation skills and knowledge of virtual chatbots.
Why? The company has done this for helping its employees in fetching chips and soda from the breakrooms easily.
Last week, a demo of these mechanical waiters was shown by the company to reporters. These robots in action are an embodiment of a breakthrough in artificial intelligence.
This will pave the way for the introduction of multipurpose robots that would be as easy to control, as those that perform structured and single tasks, such as doing guard duty or vacuuming.
Not for sale
However, it is important to note that Google is not selling these robots. They have been designed to perform only a handful of simple actions.
In addition, the company has not yet embedded these new robots with the summoning feature of ‘OK, Google’ that most consumers have now become familiar with.
Even though the company has disclosed that it is responsibly pursuing the development of these mechanical robots, there is a possibility that their adoption could stall.
This would be primarily over concerns about the robots being used for the purpose of surveillance, or chat technology could also be incorporated in these robots that may respond offensively.
This is something that Meta Platforms Inc. and a number of other companies have had to experience in the last few years.
Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp are some of the other companies that are also conducting comparable research on the use of robots.
The senior director of robotics research at Google, Vincent Vanhoucke, stated that it would take them a while before they can truly assess the direct commercial impact of these robots.
The functions
When the robot was asked to clean up a spill, Google’s machine was able to recognize that the sensible response is to grab a sponge and clean.
It was able to identify that apologizing for making the mess in the first place was not the sensible approach to take.
Commands spoken naturally are also interpreted by the robots and they also assess the possible actions in accordance with their capabilities.
Once they do so, they come up with smaller steps in order to achieve this task. This has been accomplished by infusing language technology into robots.
This technology understands the world from social media, Wikipedia, and other web pages. The same is applicable in the case of AI virtual assistants and chatbots.
But, Google stated that it had not been applied so extensively in the case of robots before. The effort had been unveiled by the company in April through a research paper.
Since then, they had incorporated more sophisticated language AI, which had resulted in success in the robots when it came to following commands from 61% to 74%.
