Robots learn household tasks by watching humans

Researchers have developed a new learning method for robots called WHIRL, short for In-the-Wild Human Imitating Robot Learning. WHIRL is an efficient algorithm for one-shot visual imitation. It can learn directly from human-interaction videos and generalize that information to new tasks, making robots well-suited to learning household chores. People constantly perform various tasks in their homes. With WHIRL, a robot can observe those tasks and gather the video data it needs to eventually determine how to complete the job itself.

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