While IEEE Spectrum has not yet seen fit to hire me my own butler (like most bloggers tend to expect), as far as I can tell (and let me just clarify that I have absolutely no idea about this whatsoever) being a butler requires mastery of three things: looking good in a tux, having a butler-y attitude, and not spilling things on trays. PR2 might be able to cover those first two, but we now have video proof that it's nailed the third one: PR2 is officially a traymaster.
The deal with moving things around on trays, if you've ever tried it, is that your goal should be to minimize the lateral force on whatever is on the tray, because lateral forces make things fly off and crash to the ground and then your mom yells at you and you don't get to play butler anymore. Sigh. This involves tilting the tray in just the right way, and Tobias Kunz, a PhD student from Georgia Tech, has taught PR2 how do pull it off during his internship at Willow Garage:
And somebody from Willow had better comment and let us know what's going on at the very end there: it looks like some sort of mechanical bull surfing thing with only a questionable relationship to robotics, but maybe they're going to stick a PR2 on there at some point? I'll tell you what: I'd pay money to see that. Good money.
Via [ Willow Garage ]
