Stanford Radio

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman: E134 | Karen Liu: How robots perceive the physical world A specialist in computer animation expounds upon her rapidly evolving specialty, known as physics-based simulation, and how it is helping robots become more physically aware of the world around them. Stanford’s Karen Liu is a computer scientist who works in robotics. She hopes that someday machines might take on caregiving roles, like helping medical patients get dressed and undressed each day. That quest has provided her a special insight into just what a monumental challenge such seemingly simple tasks are. After all, she points out, it takes a human child several years to learn to dress themselves — imagine what it takes to teach a robot to help a person who is frail or physically compromised? Liu is among a growing coterie of scientists who are promoting “physics-based simulations” that are speeding up the learning process for robots. That is, rather than building actual robots and refining them as they