Alphabet X's new Everyday Robot project wants to build robots that can learn from the world around them

Today, Alphabet's X moonshot division (formerly known as Google X) unveiled the Everyday Robot project, whose goal is to develop a "general-purpose learning robot." The idea is that its robots could use cameras and complex machine learning algorithms to see and learn from the world around them without needing to be coded for every individual movement. The team is testing robots that can help out in workplace environments, though right now, these early robots are focused on learning how to sort trash. Here's what one of them looks like -- it reminds me of a very tall, one-armed Wall-E (ironic, given what the robots are tasked to do): The concept of grasping something comes pretty easily to most humans, but it's a very challenging thing to teach a robot, and Everyday Robot's robots get their practice in both the physical world and the virtual world. In a tour of X's offices, Wired described how a "playpen" of nearly 30 of the robots (supervised by humans) spend their daytime hours sorting trash into trays for compost, landfill, and recycling.