Domo is the name of this humanoid assistive robot developed at MIT researchers to help the elderly or people with physical disabilities. Built by postdoctoral associate Aaron Edsinger and his colleagues, Domo was based on the breakthroughs achieved by famed MIT robots Cog and Kismet. From the MIT News Office (photo by Donna Coveney):
"The real potential of robots in the future is going to be realized when they can do many types of manual tasks," including those that require interaction with humans, Edsinger said…
Robots that are designed to help people in their homes will have to be able to ignore the clutter found in most environments and focus only on certain stimuli, says Edsinger.
"Typically robots are placed in very restricted worlds because then you can control the environment. If you put a robot in someone's home, that approach just doesn't extend to that," he said. "We want the robot to adapt to the world, not the world to adapt to the robot."
