Say Hello to TidyBot

Not only will this robot pick up after you; with just a little explanation of your personal preferences, it will extrapolate how it tidies up your space to multiple tasks. "For instance, one person may prefer storing shirts in the drawer, while another may prefer them on the shelf. We aim to build systems that can learn such preferences from just a handful of examples via prior interactions with a particular person," according to its web site. This fascinating research led by Jimmy Wu, a computer science grad student, uses large language models to infer user preferences. They deployed this model on TidyBot, a mobile manipulator that successfully put away 85 percent of objects in real-world test scenarios.