Baxter Robot teaches students at the University of California

We have seen robots employed in manufacturing industries, in the medical field and even in the entertainment sector. Now they have branched out into a new career path at the University of California, Berkeley. A robot named Baxter now teaches students. ‘He’ has been invented by Rodney Brooks, founder of the start-up Rethink Robotics and one of the world’s most celebrated roboticists.

Baxter teaches a class of about 30 students about the principles of using and coding for robotics, along with a professor. He runs on the open source Robot Operating System (ROS) which is embedded in his chest. With a friendly face and an animated screen programmed with a smile, Baxter has sensors in his head which help him to sense people nearby and adapt into an environment. At present, students use Python and other coding languages to control Baxter’s various sensors.

Safety issues and the lack of a universal operating system were the two road blocks that earlier prevented robots from teaching. That said, Baxter is known to be one of the safest robots on earth. Also, he is powered by a universal operating system, based on which developers can build apps that can run across a variety of machines, as the OS supports app development. Students have even developed programs that enable Baxter to ‘clean up’ a table. Using its camera and other sensors, Baxter was able to identify the objects and move them back to their original resting spots.

Compared to other robots, Baxter is cost effective too. While other robots cost around US$ 250,000, Baxter is available for US$ 22,000. Rethink Robotics had built an industrial robot with the same name in 2012. Industry experts believe that experiments like Baxter will revolutionise the teaching domain in the coming years.