VIDEO: THIS ROBOT CAN PICK SOMETHING OUT OF A BIN

MIT and Princeton engineers made the most monotonous topic on earth – the act of picking something out of a bin – a lot cooler. Their latest robotic invention is a picker-upper that runs an 'object agnostic grasping algorithm' every time it begins its epic journey of tedious lifting. It is packed with a custom gripper and a suction cup.

For instance, there is an item in the bin: a toothbrush. But, the toothbrush at the bottom of the bin is also surrounded by a bottle of pills and a tiny ceramic jar of ashes. The robot arm is capable of descending into that bin of items, locating the toothbrush and grabbing it, exactly the way a toothbrush needs to be grabbed. It can then finish the job – grabbing and sorting the bottle of pills and the little jar of ashes, safely-according to the algorithm that MIT and Princeton created.

Once the object is out of the bin, cameras snap some pictures of the toothbrush from various angles. Now, the robot can store the toothbrush into its perfect, robot memory and place the item in a new bin with its perfect robot arm. Grasp-first-then-recognise:’ this is – according to MIT – this picky robot’s ‘carpe diem.’