Robot can find keys in a bag just by listening as it rummages around

A robotic arm with an attached microphone learned to locate objects in a bag based on the sound they make, including a ring of keys and a bag of crisps

By Jeremy Hsu

A robotic arm with an attached microphone has learned how to locate noisy objects tossed into a bag, grabbing a set of keys by listening for the telltale clinking sound and picking out a crinkly bag of crisps sight unseen.

“That environment is basically like you reach down, you don’t know where the keys are, but then once you hear the sound of the keys you can kind of localise it,” says Maximilian Du …