By Adam Zewe, MIT News
Researchers have developed an algorithm that lets a robot ‘think ahead’ and consider thousands of potential motion plans simultaneously.
Ready for that long-awaited summer vacation? First, you’ll need to pack all items required for your trip into a suitcase, making sure everything fits securely without crushing anything fragile.
Because humans possess strong visual and geometric reasoning skills, this is usually a straightforward problem, even if it may take a bit of finagling to squeeze everything in.
To a robot, though, it is an extremely complex planning challenge that requires thinking simultaneously about many actions, constraints, and mechanical capabilities. Finding an effective solution could take the robot a very long time – if it can even come up with one. [Read more…] about MIT scientists develop new system to enable robots to solve manipulation problems in seconds