Imagine having a Robot sidekick who can assist you with cleaning and other domestic activities without having to worry about the unavailability of a domestic worker!

Sounds brilliant, right?

Well! The leading Eco-friendly brand Toyota’s subsidiary, Toyota Research Institute, has introduced their new robot on 21st June, National selfie day, by releasing a video in which the robot performs the cleaning activities. The video also demonstrates that the robot can take cute selfies to showcase its performing skills.

In 2018, it was, estimated that there were nearly 16.3 million domestic robots. But, the key challenge with domestic robots is that most robots, unlike humans, get confused while working with the reflective or transparent items in the home environment as they cannot differentiate the actual objects and their reflections.

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) works on the advancement of robotics. Recently, it is resolving this major challenge by developing a new robot that can work efficiently by identifying reflections and transparent surfaces. To build this Trendsetter, TRI has adopted a novel training method that can perceive the 3D geometry of the scene while detecting the objects and surface around them.

This breakthrough technology enables the researchers to incorporate “programmable data”, which is primarily synthetic data. It can be adapted to generate a situation algorithmically and train the robots rather than collecting Physical data with real-life events and then make them practice the task. The use of synthetic data reduces time and also saves expense.

In the Mind-blowing video released by TRI on National selfie day, you can notice that the robot performs all the cleaning activities by identifying a wipeable surface and handling the smooth and transparent objects in the way with its hassle-free approach.

Max Bajracharya, vice president of robotics at TRI, said: “Training robots to understand how to operate in home environments poses special challenges because of the diversity and complexity of our homes where small tasks can add up to big challenges.”

TRI addresses its latest innovation as “Robo-Selfie”. It is designed to work in a diverse environment in various homes. Perceiving the geometry of the human atmosphere was the biggest challenge for robots. Robo-selfie’s new technology would solve this challenge.

Robots cannot replace human abilities, but they can assist humans and make our work efficient to bring advancements in the future.