TU/e scholars forced a breakthrough in robot technologies! Scientists of Universities of Technology in München, Zaragoza, Zurich, Stuttgart and from Philips gathered in Eindhoven for the past week. Together with these institutions, the TU/e formesRoboEarth, a project that aims on developing a world wide web for robots. For five days in a row, a group of 35 people worked from early in the morning till late at night. Ultimate goal was to have Tech United healthcare robot AMIGO pick up a bottle of water and serve it to a patient who is waiting in a bed. Thursday night at half past two, the group managed to have AMIGO autonomously perform this task! Making it even more striking was the fact that the robot was able to download the required instructions from a RoboEarth database! Never before a robotics group was able to create this sort of 'wikipedia for robots'. René van de Molengraft, chief technology of Tech United and project coordinator of RoboEarth, speaks of 'a massive breakthrough'. Eventually the databases of RoboEarth will allow different types of robots to learn from each other. It will take a couple more years before robots will do this on a large scale but for now AMIGO performing the bottle of water task can be considered a memorable moment.

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