AI models let robots carry out tasks in unfamiliar environments

The team, consisting of researchers from New York University, Meta, and the robotics company Hello Robot, hopes its findings will make it quicker and easier to teach robots new skills while helping them function within previously unseen domains. The approach could make it easier and cheaper to deploy robots in our homes. "In the past, people have focused a lot on the problem of'How do we get robots to do everything?' but not really asking'How do we get robots to do the things that they do know how to do--everywhere?'" says Mahi Shafiullah, a PhD student at New York University who worked on the project. "We looked at'How do you teach a robot to, say, open any door, anywhere?'" Teaching robots new skills generally requires a lot of data, which is pretty hard to come by.