Robot Bartender [VIDEO]

Technology has taken another leap recently as a research team from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute developed a robotic bartender who is capable of retrieving drinks that you have selected and bringing them to you. The Search-based Planning Laboratory, has unveiled their PR2 dual-arm mobile robot. The PR2 is capable of receiving snack and drink orders, as you would in any bar or restaurant, and then pilots itself across a room to get it and bring it back to you.

What you do is order a snack or a drink through a control panel which syncs up to the robot. The PR2 then maps out the room around it through built-in cameras. It then calculates the distance between itself and the snack or drinks, navigates around the room through, adjusts itself in the proper distance to which it is able to extend its arms, picks up the item, and brings it back to the person.

The machine displays speech capabilities (albeit programmed), an awareness of its surroundings, and real-world computational abilities that appear to borderline on sentience.

One really has to ask: Has this become a significant step in building the inevitable future where machines rule the earth with cold metal fists?

Check out the video uploaded by cmurobotics below to see the demonstration:

via: ITworld