Processer helps robots plan movement up to 10,000 times faster

Unlike humans, robots generally find it hard to adapt to environments where new movements are required. This means that picking up an object in a situation that has not been pre-engineered may require several seconds of computation. However, the Duke team claims its new processor is fast enough to plan and operate in real time, and power-efficient enough to be used in large-scale manufacturing environments.

"When you think about a car assembly line, the entire environment is carefully controlled so that the robots can blindly repeat the same movements over and over again," said George Konidaris, assistant professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering at Duke.

"The car parts are in exactly the same place every time, and the robots are contained within cages so that humans don't wander past. But if your robot is using motion planning in real time and a part is in a different place, or there's some unexpected clutter, or a human walks by, it'll do the right thing."