This Robot Learned to Make a Salad by Watching YouTube

[Jesus Malverde]

Julia Child taught a generation of Americans how to cook gourmet French cuisine by breaking it down into simple steps that anyone could follow. A robot named for her at the University of Maryland took a similar approach when it taught itself to make a salad.

Using pattern recognition software designed by the interdisciplinary robotics team at the College Park campus, Julia the robot watched YouTube videos of people making salads to learn the steps, from cutting vegetables to tossing the ingredients and even pouring the salad dressing at the end.

Computer science professor Yiannis Aloimonos said the team chose cooking because it is something that everyone understands how to do but which is actually challenging for a robot to learn. But the lessons they’ve learned in programming Julia could be applied to just about any human activity, from stocking shelves to working on a factory floor.

“If you can work in the kitchen with your hands and do things, basically you can do almost anything else,” he said.

http://time.com/3860218/robot-salad-youtube/

[jberryhill]

1. I, for one, welcome our new salad making robot overlords

[KittyWampus]

3. I shall resist until the dessert making robot overlords make themselves known.

[subterranean]

2. Dr. Aloimonos sees these robots as "the next industrial revolution."

I see millions more people who will eventually lose their jobs to robots.

[MADem]

5. I had a relative who worked in a massive restaurant complex in her distant youth.

She had to make tons of salads every day and prepare soups, too (the soup "concentrate" was already prepared off-site, she just had to add a few other ingredients to a giant pot and then scrub out the giant pot at the end of the day). It was a thankless job.

People who lose their jobs to robots will do other jobs, not even invented yet--like "making robots" and "repairing robots" and "installing robots."

A lot of the buggy whip manufacturers and blacksmiths shoeing horses lost their jobs to the advent of the car, too. They found other work. We can't hold back technological advances out of fear. Who the hell LIKES doing things like picking cotton or making industrial amounts of salad?

[merrily]

4. Say good-bye to more jobs. "Do you want frrrreyez with that?"