Most of the time, most of us have absolutely no idea what robots are thinking. Someone who builds and programs a robot does have some idea how that robot is supposed to act based on certain inputs, but as sensors get more ubiquitous and the software that manages them and synthesizes their data to make decisions gets more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to get a sense of what’s actually going on. MIT is trying to address that issue, and they’re using augmented reality to do it.
In an experiment, the researchers used their AR system to place obstacles—like human pedestrians—in the path of robots, which had to navigate through a virtual city. The robots had to detect the obstacles and then compute the optimal route to avoid running into them. As the robots did that, a projection system displayed their “thoughts” on the ground, so researchers could visualize them in real time. The “thoughts” consisted of colored lines and dots—representing obstacles, possible paths, and the optimal route—that were constantly changing as the robots and pedestrians moved.
via IEEE Spectrum
Image: MIT
