Charmed by Six Feet of Circuitry

August 8, 2002 | Source: New York Times

Grace, a six-foot autonomous robot, was the star of the recent annual meeting of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in Canada.Grace performed successfully in the “Robot Challenge” event: start at the entrance to the conference center, take the elevator to the registration desk, register for the conference and then deliver a speech in the auditorium.

Grace was co-developed by Carnegie Mellon University (overall hardware and software architecture), the Naval Research Lab (speech recognition software), Northwestern University (software for delivering a PowerPoint presentation), Swarthmore College (pattern-recognition software for finding and reading signs), and Metrica (gesture interpretation system).