Robots, even very well programmed robots, really don’t care about you. And by “you,” I mean humans. And even if a robot did care about you, most of them don’t have a clue about what you’re doing or what you want. We’ve seen all kinds of examples of robots that have been programmed to collaborate with humans, but few so directly as this Georgia Tech robot, thanks to a wearable sensor that lets it “spy” on its human partner.
“It turns into a constant tug of war between the person and the robot,” explains Billy Gallagher, a recent Georgia Tech Ph.D. graduate in robotics who led the project. “Both react to each other’s forces when working together. The problem is that a person’s muscle stiffness is never constant, and a robot doesn’t always know how to correctly react.”
via IEEE Spectrum
