Researchers design virtual environment to spur development of helpful home robots

Without much prior experience, kids can recognize other people's intentions and come up with plans to help them achieve their goals, even in novel scenarios. That's why researchers at MIT, Nvidia, and ETH Zurich developed Watch-And-Help (WAH), a challenge in which embodied AI agents need to understand goals by watching a demonstration of a human performing a task and coordinating with the human to solve the task as quickly as possible. The concept of embodied AI draws on embodied cognition, the theory that many features of psychology -- human or otherwise -- are shaped by aspects of the entire body of an organism. By applying this logic to AI, researchers hope to improve the performance of AI systems like chatbots, robots, autonomous vehicles, and even smart speakers that interact with their environments, people, and other AI. A truly embodied robot could check to see whether a door is locked, for instance, or retrieve a smartphone that's ringing in an upstairs bedroom.