

July 19, 2013\u2014Robotics expert and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Chad Jenkins says that coming breakthroughs in robotics will soon make robots a bigger part of everyday life, helping us perform more tasks in our homes and workplaces.

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I think everybody looks at the robot and describes their own human features to it because it does have two sets of cameras that sort of look like eyes. \u00a0It is sort of designed to give you sense of being a person and working in human spaces.

What we're really trying to do is get robots out of the lab and into use with people. \u00a0And figure out how robots are going to be able to help people do more, accomplish more things and also improve the quality of life of everybody across society.

There are certain examples that we think are really compelling: being able to assist the disabled, being able to help the elderly.

But the real barriers to entry right now are accessibility. \u00a0Robots still cost a lot. \u00a0They're still difficult to interface with.

Traditionally I worked in the areas of robot learning from demonstration where you don't have to programmer to control the robot, to program the robot.

There are many different ways you can actually teach a robot. \u00a0One is you can just show the robot what you want to do. \u00a0You can have the robot watch you do something. \u00a0That's really hard because the robot now has to track your movements and has to perceive what are the things you are interacting with.

A must easier approach is to just take the robot's arm and guide the robots arm through the motions that you want it to execute.

Another approach is to treat the robot like remote control device. \u00a0You take the robots perspective and your joysticking the robot through the actions you want it to execute.

Once we do those demonstrations, are task is to take that data, apply machine learning and statistical techniques to it such that we can extract, essentially, a mapping from what the robot sees at a given time to what we actually want it to take.

We love to make it based on what we call Natural Language Commands so that you can tell the robot, \"Can you pick up that glass for me?\" and it would pick up the glass for you.

FROM EXPLORERS SYMPOSIUM JUNE 2013: \u00a0\"I just want to show the Suitable Technology beamed remote presence device. \u00a0So I can access this system from anywhere around the world. \u00a0So I was sitting right here where Erin is sitting this morning. \u00a0And I was like, 'Alright, I just want to check in on the lab.' \u00a0So I beamed into this system and essentially drove around my lab. \u00a0I can just do this myself. \u00a0In addition to not being reliant on somebody to just be there to take the call. \u00a0I can also affect physically change in the world. \u00a0Literally, change the world!\" \u00a0[Audience laughs]

Robots is really an extension of the information technology revolution that we've had over the past few decades. What computing did over the last forty years are the same things that robotics will provide now, except we have more wisdom about the technology to do it better, to not just think about how the systems will improve our productivity and help us do more, but also think about how we can improve everybody's life across the world, across to the socio-economic spectrum.

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