some time back we got a close study the innards of Qbo , TheCorpora’s open-source robot. But we’ve not gotten to look the little guy in action — in the past. His handlers recently let him loose to run autonomously, guided by a couple of webcam eyes and voice recognition courtesy of Willow Garage’s ROS software . The team soon noticed some unexpected behavior, though. Despite being programmed to follow humans at a particular distance, Qbo trailed uncomfortably near with taller people — probably the primary example of a robotic “close walker.” Poring over the log files revealed why: proximity was calculated in keeping with faces. The faces of taller people were farther faraway from the bottom-hugging robot, which adjusted accordingly. Roll your way down the page to peer more of our cute mechanized friend, and over to the source link for more musings on programming him.
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