This Warehouse Robot Reads Human Body Language

Rodney Brooks knows a fair bit about robots. Besides being a pioneer of academic robotics research, he has founded companies that have given the world the robot vacuum cleaner, the bomb disposal bot, and a factory robot anyone can program. Now Brooks wants to introduce another revolutionary type of robot helper--a mobile warehouse robot with the ability to read human body language to tell what workers around it are doing. Robots are increasingly working in close proximity to humans, and finding ways to maximize human-machine teamwork could help companies boost productivity and perhaps lead to new kinds of jobs rather than robots replacing people. But giving robots the ability to read human cues is far from easy.