Dec. 12, 2011 at 3:10 PM ET
Owners of household robots may soon be able to issue orders such as "make me a sandwich" or "pop me some popcorn" and a robot will do the rest, as demonstrated by Technical University of Munich's robots James and Rosie in this video above.
While we've seen robots do other household chores ranging from making sausage breakfasts to folding laundry, this latest accomplishment is yet one more example of robots that think for themselves — that is, James and Rosie aren't programmed to do each and every step in the food preparation process.
To get the job done, the robots take advantage of technical advances such as Kinect sensors to detect objects in their surroundings.
"Giving robots the ability to take a complex task and autonomously infer all the intermediate tasks that it can then execute one at a time means that you'll be able to say, 'Make me a sandwich' … and the robot will just go and do it, no questions asked," notes IEEE's Automation blog.
More on robots that do chores:
- Robots make sausages for breakfast
- Robot recognizes self in mirror
- This robot scoops poop
- Mmm! Robot makes cookies
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.