Robots: They make pancakes and pizza, just like us

If you've ever needed to know how to tie a bowtie or fix a strawberry daiquiri, you likely ended up on a website like WikiHow for step-by-step instructions. Surprisingly, some robots are now doing the same.

A robot called PR2 in Germany is learning to prepare pancakes and pizzas by carefully reading through WikiHow's written directions. It's part of a European project called RoboHow, which is exploring ways of teaching robots to understand language. This could make it easier for people to communicate instructions to robots, and provide a way for machines to figure out how to perform unfamiliar tasks. Instead of programming a robot to perform precise movements, the goal is for a person to simply tell a robot what to do. Read more...