Robot perception enhanced with hearing

Researchers at CMU's Robotics Institute found that sounds could help a robot differentiate between objects, such as a metal screwdriver and a metal wrench. According to CMU, hearing could similarly help robots determine what type of action caused a sound and help them use sounds to predict the physical properties of new objects.

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"A lot of preliminary work in other fields indicated that sound could be useful, but it wasn't clear how useful it would be in robotics," said Lerrel Pinto, who recently earned his Ph.D. in robotics at CMU. He and his colleagues found the performance rate was quite high, with robots that used sound successfully classifying objects 76 per cent of the time.

The results were so encouraging, he added, that it might prove useful to equip future robots with instrumented canes, enabling them to tap objects they want to identify.

The researchers presented their findings during the virtual Robotics Science and Systems conference. Other team members included Abhinav Gupta, associate professor of robotics, and Dhiraj Gandhi, a former master's student who is now a research scientist at Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research's Pittsburgh lab.