British scientists create robot that can move things around to get the milk out of the fridge

A robot that can quickly dig a bottle of milk out of the depths of a cluttered fridge has been created by a team of British scientists. The artificial intelligence does this by combining automated planning -- based on images taken of the objects -- with trial-by-error learning. Alongside rearranging fridge contents, the same setup could be applied to allow robots to perform various similar tasks -- such as locating items in a warehouse. When reaching into a crowded fridge, it may sometimes not be possible to remove, say, a desired pint of milk without first shuffling other items in the way around first. While this kind of operation may come easily to us, such a complex task for a robot -- requiring it to devise a chain of separate movements leading to the end goal which can be time consuming to calculate.