Toyota’s Robots Step Up for Holiday Giving

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is rarely in the news for anything other than vehicles, but their robotics team has been quietly revolutionizing things in ways that will matter during the holiday season. The institute’s personnel devised a strategy to align their superior technology with the needs of their local community at this time of year. A large group of people, including some with no robotics background, collaborated with the researchers to teach the robot arms a new trick.

In the lab, the robot arms were learning to place objects in boxes, sort them properly, and pack them into supply packages. These packages were filled with things such as snacks and hygiene products, all intended to assist folks who are struggling to get by while waiting for food handouts or a place to stay.

They were able to quickly complete the training, with staff workers explaining the robots how to do it and helping them through each repetition. Rather than having to write code, they just employed a system that detects patterns in what humans do and refines them into reliable performance. Once operational, the robots were able to chip in and assemble 120 of these kits entirely on their own. Then it was just a matter of loading them into vehicles and transporting them to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank.

The institute also made a $5,000 donation to SF-Marin Food Bank, which should provide around 10,000 meals through their initiatives. On top of that, they included goods worth approximately $3,500. However, in addition to the direct assistance, the project provided them with some extremely useful knowledge. Toyota saw how quickly the robots can learn new abilities and how well everything runs, and learned a lot about how successfully the training they were employing translated to real-world jobs. Every time they attempted something new, they gained a little more knowledge to help them improve their technology in the future.