Tag: robots

One day in May, guests at Paschal’s, a historic Castleberry Hill restaurant, witnessed an extraordinary dance in the center of the dining room. Two food runners, Charlene and Larry, spun around each other trying to get to their respective tables. Inexperienced staff colliding is nothing new in the hospitality industry, but this was different. Charlene and Larry are robots.

On a quiet Saturday morning in May, I went for a lovely walk through my neighborhood with my family: my husband, my infant son, and a $3,250 robot named Gita.

The Robotarium is an open-access lab with swarm robots, or robots in large quantities. Palm-sized robots roll—and plate-sized ones fly in the middle of the room where anyone in the world can remotely run experiments on the lab’s robots, simply by uploading code to the Robotarium’s website.

A few years ago, Georgia Tech professor Gil Weinberg heard from local drummer Jason Barnes, who had lost his right arm. Weinberg’s team built a prosthesis that could hold not just one drumstick but two. After Barnes became an overnight sensation as one of the world’s fastest drummers, Weinberg then wondered, “Why not everyone?”

The best stories each week about Atlanta, from Atlanta-based writers, and beyond.

Thanks to a team of engineering and finance grads from Georgia Tech, cocktail culture has a new on-demand button. Meet Monsieur, an artificially intelligent robot that can shake up cocktails from scratch in just a few seconds.

Outsiders may envision Georgia Tech as some futuristic mothership where super-intelligent scientists-in-training walk side by side with robots. And they may be right. In recent years, professors and students at the Midtown campus have developed artificial intelligence that can feed you, bathe you, and practically tuck you in.

Meet GATSBII. He’s a sturdy fellow who weighs about 450 pounds and stands at four foot four—unless he needs to reach something and extends to five foot five. He looks just like the classic robot of your imagination: a broad, rolling base that contains two operating computers; arms with clawlike pincers; a laser scanner that hums up and down; and a row of cameras and an Xbox Kinect atop his head. (Yes, we know you shouldn’t use personal pronouns for a robot, but who can resist? Just look at him.)