Robots have began learning the art of cooking just by watching youtube videos. The research team at the University of Maryland has developed a deep learning technique that enables the robots to learn how to cook by watching several ‘how to cook’ videos on YouTube. These robots are smart enough to ‘understand’ the instructions in these videos and then turn them into specific executable commands for themselves. The system comprises of convolutional neural network aka CNN based recognition models and a parsing module that generates visual sequences for the robots.
The research team believes that they’re still at the preliminary state in the development of a fully intelligent robotic system. The aim for the team is to create super-intelligent robots that are capable of enriching their knowledge just by watching recordings available on the WWW and generate executable action sequences.
The robots that can cook aren’t new and several restaurants in China have already deployed noodle-slicing robots that replace the human cooks. According to a research published by Oxford University, there’s a very high chance (~92%) that most of the fast food preparation will be outsourced to the robots in the coming decades.
We do not know if we should be excited by this news. No doubt it’s an excellent engineering achievement; but it also takes us a step closer to the automated world where machines won’t need humans. We can relax till these robots look and act cute. What say?
