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.

Here’s a video about MIT’s COG project. The videos a bit dated but interesting nonetheless.

More information about the COG project including: a FAQ, current research and the history of the project itself can be found in the COG section of MIT’s Humanoid Robotics Group website.