Aside from the Roomba, robots haven't made much progress
infiltrating American homes. But researchers at Stanford
University have developed software that overcomes one of the
biggest challenges: teaching a robot how to pick up an object it
has never encountered before. The robot's software suggests that
the best way to pick up something new is by determining the most
grabable part of the object--the stem of a wineglass, the handle
of a mug, or the edge of a book, for instance. Engineers and
science-fictions fans have long dreamed of putting robotics in
the home, says Andrew Ng, professor of computer science at
Stanford. In fact, the robotic hardware that exists today could
allow a robot to do the complex tasks that are required to pick
up objects, keep a house clean, and so on. But the missing
piece, Ng explains, is software that can allow robots to do
these things by themselves. A dexterous robot with the smarts to
pick up new objects without being specifically programmed to do
so could be useful for complex