Fujitsu robot learns to cook

Fujitsu's humanoid robot HOAP-3 can do lots of nifty tricks like write its name and do acrobatics, but now it can add cooking to its repertoire.

Sylvain Calinon and other researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland have used imitation learning and probabilistic models to teach HOAP to help make omelets. Through direct human guidance, it learns to whip eggs, cut ham and grate cheese, focusing on the most essential part of each task and ignoring irrelevant events. It automatically adapts when a mixing bowl is moved.

As the longer video below shows, the silky-voiced HOAP recognizes objects through visual markers, and researchers answer its queries with a Wii remote. They also curse it when it screws up!

Foolishly, the researchers armed the robot with a sharp knife - but they survived the experiment.

The HOAP cooking show is part of the European Commission's Cogniron project to create helpful humanoids. HOAP, or Humanoid for Open Architecture Platform, was designed as a research platform and was marketed back in 2001.