Seriously, it must have taken a lot of work to accomplish: One of the biggest challenges in getting robots to work together is dealing with the uncertainties presented by the human world. For example, a Turtlebot heading to the PR2 bartender bot might be thwarted by the bartender serving another Turtlebot or by the PR2 being unobservable by the other bots' sensors. Robots are often unable to communicate with each other unless in close proximity, another issue that the team is working on so that the system can be tested in more complex scenarios such as search-and-rescue.



The CSAIL team was able to develop planning algorithms that coordinated groups of bots to perform tasks with only a description of the problem by programming them to see tasks as a series of macro-actions that involved multiple steps. Which means the robots approach tasks like "Fetch me another martini!" more like a human would. Now if they could only get it to make scones and call everybody Wesley....

[Image credit: Tom Buehler/CSAIL]