Discovery News - Robot can read, learn like a human

…In a move both simple and brilliant, the Oxford scientists installed text recognition software complete with spell-checker and dictionary, onto Marge, a small robot on wheels.

By using a few new tricks to separate text from, say, sticks or trash, and correcting the image based on a simple spell-check and the word's meaning in the dictionary, Marge can bridge the gap in intuition. That means she can read newspapers like the New York Times and learn about banks like Barclays and that restaurants like Strada are good places to eat.

"On the one hand it makes perfect sense," said Gregory Dudek, a scientist at the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University. "The environment has markings for people to use, and this exploits those human markings for use in a robot."