Novel artificial intelligence system may help robots complete household chores

BOSTON: Scientists are developing an artificial intelligence system that can get virtual agents to complete simple household chores in a simulated environment, paving the way for future robots to learn such tasks. The team from University of Toronto in Canada and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US trained the system called VirtualHome using nearly 3,000 programmes of various activities, which are further broken down into subtasks for the computer to understand. A simple task like "making coffee," for example, would also include the step "grabbing a cup." The researchers demonstrated VirtualHome in a 3D world inspired by Sims - a life-simulation video game. The team's AI agent can execute 1,000 of these interactions in the Sims-style world, with eight different scenes including a living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and home office.