The Wandering Robot
If you happen to live near Munich Germany you may have noticed a curious sight recently, no I’m not talking about pub goers clad in lederhosen, this was something much stranger than that. A robot from the Technical University of Munich began asking for directions to the Marienplatz in the center of town, roughly a mile away.
This wasn’t some collage prank, the researchers wanted to test their design in a real-world environment. After asking 38 people ACE (Autonomous City Explorer) managed to find his destination. The ability to find a destination with the help of humans will prove to be a very valuable ability once robots are fully integrated into society.
Not only was this a great opportunity for the researchers with regard to programming the robot to ask the right questions and process the data, it was a great social experiment as well. Imagine if they had made the robot less approachable, slightly more intimidating, they might not have had the same results. I wonder what the ratio of people who took the time to interact with the robot were versus those who just ignored it. Either way experiments like this are fascinating and put us that much closer to a world full of robot helpers.
