Robots Can Learn From The Internet Through Robo Brain

Robo Brain is a database used to serve the robotic helpers in our homes, offices and factories, reports KurzweilAI.

Robo Brain is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals, all being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format.

"In searching for knowledge, a robot's brain makes its own multi-dimensional queries when looking for answers," said Aditya Jami, a visiting researcher at Cornell, who designed the large-scale database for the brain.

Robotics researcher Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, and his associates at Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab have previously taught robots these skills individually over time.

Sample tasks include how to find your keys, pour a drink, put away dishes and when not to interrupt two people having a conversation. All of this is becoming automated: "If a robot encounters a situation it hasn't seen before, it can query Robo Brain in the cloud," said Saxena.

Saxena and colleagues say Robo Brain will process images to pick out the objects in them, and by connecting images and video with text, it will learn to recognize objects and how they are used, along with human language and behavior.

If a robot sees a coffee mug, it can learn from Robo Brain not only that it's a coffee mug but also that liquids can be poured into or out of it, that it can be grasped by the handle and that it must be carried upright when it is full, as opposed to when it is being carried from the dishwasher to the cupboard.

This system employs what computer scientists call "structured deep learning," where information is stored in many levels of abstraction. An easy chair is a member of the class of chairs, and, going up another level, chairs are furniture.

Robo Brain knows that chairs are something you can sit on but that a human can also sit on a stool, a bench or the lawn.

Like a human learner, Robo Brain will have teachers, thanks to crowdsourcing. The Robo Brain website will display things the brain has learned, and visitors will be able to make additions and corrections.