california-based robotics start-up NVIDIA has debuted its ‘kitchen manipulator’, an AI-powered robot that could be the next must-have home gadget and your future sous-chef. the robot can track objects like dirty dishes, open and close drawers, identify ingredients and even make meals.

images courtesy of NVIDIA

the robot is one in a collection of robots being developed at NVIDIA’s newly opened new lab in seattle. the NVIDIA research team consists of more than 200 scientists around the globe, focusing on areas including AI, computer vision, self-driving cars, robotics and graphics. leading the facility is dieter fox, senior director of robotics research at NVIDIA and professor at the university of washington paul g. allen school of computer science and engineering.

fox is a leading researcher in robotics and AI. his current research is in interactive manipulation, where robots, called ‘cobots,’ can perform complex tasks and work alongside humans. ‘we want to develop robots that can naturally perform tasks alongside people,’ said fox. ‘to do that, they need to be able to understand what a person wants to do and figure out how to help her achieve a goal.‘

NVIDIA’s ‘kitchen manipulator’ detects objects in its surroundings and uses that data to generate ‘continuous perceptual feedback’ of where they are if they’re moved, if they fall or their position changes in any way. this information is then fed to a motion generation layer of the machine learning software, which enables the robot to make real-time, fast, reactive, adaptive and human-like motion.

cobots could play a role in factories, hospitals, helping people with disabilities and, now in the house, or more specifically, the kitchen. ‘collaborative robotics, we might even call it the holy grail of robotics right now,’ nathan ratliff, a distinguished research scientist at NVIDIA, explains. ‘it’s one of the most challenging environments to get these robots to operate around people and do helpful helpful things in unstructured environments.’