Just as a toddler will quickly learn to recognize a tasty treat or avoid grasping a prickly object, software released today will make it easier to teach robots to learn how to behave through experience rather than painstaking reprogramming.
The software, called BrainOS, was developed by Brain Corporation, a company based in San Diego that’s backed by the mobile chipmaker Qualcomm.
Such software could ultimately make robots simpler to use. Instead of writing new code or accessing a graphical user interface, with BrainOS a user could train a robot to perform a simple task, such as moving toward a particular object, by guiding it through the process manually first.
It is especially difficult for robots to perform reliably in complex, changing settings, which is why learning is a promising approach. Some commercial robots are already capable of simple feats of learning, in fact. But BrainOS includes a range of techniques for learning, making it easy for robot engineers to tap into software libraries for learning tasks such as object recognition, navigation, and manipulation.
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