Last week I wrote about a robot that does its best to avoid
people when they’re angry. The video below shows another that’s
pretty good at doing the opposite. Created by researchers at
Brown University, it wheels along behind a person at a set
distance, as if attached to an invisible rope. The robot uses a
camera to identify and follow the person in front of it. Usually
this kind of system needs to be recalibrated for changes in
lighting and camera movement. The Brown team developed image-
recognition software and combined it with a special depth-
imaging camera. The camera uses infrared, allowing the robot to
identify and focus on the silhouette of a user. “This allows us
to reasonably segment people from background scenery with less
dependence on lighting condition,” says Chad Jenkins, an
assistant professor of computer science at Brown University who
presented the work at this year’s Human-Robot Interaction
conference in California. Even if multiple people pass in front
of the robot, it still stays focused o