Toyota Teaches A Home Helper Robot Cleaning Using VR

The Research Institute (TRI) of the Japanese tech giant Toyota is training robots on how to accomplish random household chores by allowing humans to look through the eyes of the bots using virtual reality (VR).

In a press release, TRI wrote that when a person teaches the robot a task, they can make use of different approaches and their creativity to use the hands of the bot as well as tools to complete the task.

Instead of feeding the robot a group of predetermined parameters to help the robot learn a specific move, the researchers used VR and 3D-scanning technologies with which human instructors can see things that the robot is seeing.

The human can teach everyday skills to the robot, like picking up a cup by explaining the scene with instructions and simple notes, as stated in the paper published on arXiv-a preprint server.

With TRI’s system, the robot becomes more flexible as it doesn’t need a complete house map. Instead, what it needs is to understand the objects required for a task to be accomplished. Once the robot is trained with a task, fleet learning makes learning possible.

However, there are still some limitations to the home helper robot from TRI. For example, it is not possible for the robot to generalize things it has been taught and then apply similar skills to other situations.

Another notable thing is that the robot won’t likely to be on the market any time soon. TRI said that the robot is supposed to be used as a consumer product. Rather, it will only be for future researching purposes.