This new system can teach a robot a simple household task within 20 minutes

While other types of AI, such as large language models, are trained on huge repositories of data scraped from the internet, the same can't be done with robots, because the data needs to be physically collected. This makes it a lot harder to build and scale training databases. Similarly, while it's relatively easy to train robots to execute tasks inside a laboratory, these conditions don't necessarily translate to the messy unpredictability of a real home. To combat these problems, the team came up with a simple, easily replicable way to collect the data needed to train Dobb-E--using an iPhone attached to a reacher-grabber stick, the kind typically used to pick up trash. Then they set the iPhone to record videos of what was happening.