‘Pepper’ Robot Uses Trial-and-Error Learning to Master a Child’s Game

From The Next Web:

Robots, much like children, are now using simple games to learn important skills. Pepper, SoftBank’s adorable humanoid robot, recently learned to play ball-in-a-cup (also called ring and pin) in an effort to better understand optimal trajectory. In the beginning, SoftBank’s team demonstrated the game to the robot by guiding its arm. By the end of the video below, Pepper no longer required their assistance.

It took 100 tries, but each failed attempt left Pepper to analyze and try to improve upon past performance, much like a human. After each failed attempt, the robot attempted to alter the movement slightly in an effort to solve the problem. In this case, the problem was figuring out the correct movement that would lead the ball into the cup....MORE