The next time you phone in an order to your favorite pizza place, don’t be surprised if there’s a robot making your order instead of a guy working his way through college, and it’s all thanks to the efforts on an ongoing European research project by the name of RoboHow.

Okay, so maybe the technology isn’t advanced enough yet to actually replace the staff at local pizzerias, but according to Gizmodo and the MIT Technology Review, the robot known as PR2 has already successfully demonstrated the ability to look up directions on the website WikiHow and use that information, along with text and voice commands, to cook a killer pie.

The RoboHow project is exploring new ways to teach robots how to understand language, which would make it easier for the machines to comprehend instructions given to them by humans, not to mention learn how to complete unfamiliar tasks. The goal is to make it so that the robots could simply be told what to do instead of needing to be provided with detailed instructions.

“Teaching robots how to turn high-level descriptions into specific actions is an important but challenging task. It is straightforward for humans because we have an understanding of all sorts of basic tasks, collected over a lifetime,” MIT explained. “A human does not need to be told the specific grasp needed to remove the top from a jar of tomato sauce, for instance, or that flipping a pancake involves using a spatula or some other kitchen utensil.”

Breakfast is served! Robots learn and share knowledge

So how can artificial intelligence (AI) be taught to perform in a similar manner? The RoboHow team has started by converting WikiHow guides into action in both simulations and real robots, instructing the machines to perform tasks like making pizza or cooking pancakes. They are also conducting experiments in which PR2 robots are handling chemicals and doing other tasks.

“If you have a robot in a factory, you want to say ‘Take the screw and put it into the nut and fasten the nut,’” Michael Beetz, head of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at the University of Bremen in Germany, home of the RoboHow project, explained to MIT. “You want the robot to generate the parameters automatically out of the semantic description of objects.”

After PR2 learns how a specific set of instructions relates to a task, it adds that information to an online database known as Open Ease, which allows other robots to access that knowledge. All of the instructions are encoded in machine-readable language, the researchers said, adding that they are looking at using videos and other methods to teach the robots how to perform basic duties.

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Feature image: RoboHow

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