Our Watch-Bot watches what a human is currently doing, and uses our unsupervised learning model to detect the human's forgotten actions. Once a forgotten action detected (put-milk-backto-fridge in the example), it points out the related object (milk in the example) by the laser spot in the current scene. Andrew Dalton in Engadget called it "a sort of robo-sentry." Watch-Bot is designed to keep an eye on tasks in the home or office and remind you if one of those tasks is still not done--not with a beep, not with a soothing companion-like voice, but with a laser pointer to nab the object still needing attention. Evan Ackerman in IEEE Spectrum said Watch-Bot can independently learn your household activity patterns in order to come up with its unfinished task reminders. Core components of Watch-Bot are a 3D sensor (a Kinect, in this case), a camera that can pan and tilt, a laptop, and laser pointer, said IEEE Spectrum.

The average person forgets to do three things around the house everyday. So instead of your roommate or spouse griping about the milk being left out, researches built a robot that learns your household activity patterns to send out a quiet reminder when you forget something. Using a Kinect sensor, Watch-Bot employs an unsupervised learning program to detect missed activities and a laser to point out the related object as a reminder. Watch-Bot consists of a Kinect v2 sensor, a pan/tilt camera mounted with a laser pointer, and a laptop. Footage of humans performing daily activities in kitchens and offices allowed the robot to establish a baseline of what type of behavior is normal in each other the environments.

Using its Xbox Kinect 3D sensor, a camera, a laptop and a laser pointer, Watch-Bot observed a week's worth of human activity in a kitchen and an office. During that time, it collected 458 videos -- about half of which included someone human deliberately "forgetting" to do something. The team then made Watch-Bot analyze the videos and use its unsupervised learning algorithm to determine which human actions were intentional and which ones -- like leaving the milk out on the counter -- were accidental. Using probabilistic learning models, Watch-Bot was able to independently figure out which actions the humans were forgetting. When Watch-Bot does notice the clumsy human in the room forgot to do something, it quietly highlights that item with the laser pointer until it is put away or dealt with.

There are all kinds of apps that will remind you to do things, which is great, if you remember to ask them to remind you to do things. At ICRA yesterday, researchers from Cornell and Stanford presented a project called Watch-Bot, which can independently learn your household activity patterns to provide you with helpful reminders. If you leave the milk out, or forget to turn a monitor off, or leave food in the microwave, the robot will figure out on its own that you forgot to do something and then gently remind you. Watch-Bot consists of a 3D sensor (a Kinect, in this case), a camera that can pan and tilt, a laptop, and a laser pointer. The robot was set up in a kitchen and an office, and spent a week watching people go about their business.