Robot taught to pair socks in U.S.

The team from the University of California, Berkeley have managed to program the PR2 robot to identify a pair of socks, work out if the socks need to be turned inside out, and then bundle the pair together.

The entire process takes just under 15 minutes to pair two socks - which might not sound that impressive, but if you're anything like us still represents a significant improvement on human sock-pairing speed.

Best of all, the robot's body language suggests that it is utterly delighted and proud of the quality of its work.

Some internet commenters have suggested that there is something rather obscene in the robot's sock-inverting motions.

The UC Berkeley team of Ping Chuan Wang, Stephen Miller, Mario Fritz, Trevor Darrell and Pieter Abbeel won the $5,000 first prize in a competition run by the PR2 robot's manufacturer, Willow Garage, to make the robots 'do something cool, funny, or useful.'

Other prize-winning entries included this third-placed effort, in which the robot acts as a one-man band, and helpfully demonstrates that U2's 'With Or Without You' sounds kind of rubbish when played with just a keyboard and a drum.

Of course, now that robots have successfully mastered the vital technique of sock-pairing, world domination and the overthrow of their human masters can only be a short step away.


/Metro.co.uk/