Terminator-Like Vision Could Help Robots Do Our Dishes

If the above gif looks familiar it's probably because it looks eerily similar to this: This, of course, is how the T-800 Terminator sees and recognizes objects in the world upon arrival from the future in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Similar to the movie, researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have created an object recognition system that can accurately identify objects using a normal RGB camera (no threatening blood-red color filter required). This system could help future robots interact with objects more efficiently while they navigate our complex world. "Ideally we want robots to be cleaning our dishes at some point in the future. We want recognition systems where it does in fact see the objects that the robot should care about and manipulate them," says Sudeep Pillai, lead author of the study.