New system can teach a robot a simple household task within 20 minutes

The development of AI-powered robots that can effectively operate in real homes has presented significant challenges, particularly in acquiring the necessary training data and adapting to the unpredictability of domestic environments. To address these obstacles, a team devised a novel method using an iPhone attached to a reacher-grabber stick to record videos of volunteers completing household tasks in various homes, gathering crucial data on movement and actions. With just 13 hours of recordings, an AI model was trained to instruct a commercial robot, named Stretch, to carry out these tasks. The robot was then tested in 10 homes, demonstrating an 81% success rate in completing 109 household tasks, with each task taking around 20 minutes for the robot to learn and fine-tune.