UD students roll out robot with vison

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - You can't exactly call RAIDER a 'Big Man on Campus', though he does get recognized.

RAIDER, an acronym for Robust Artificial Intelligence Based Defense Electro Robot, is the three year project of a group of graduate students from the University of Dayton.

A surveillance robot, RAIDER can identify people by scanning facial features and body traits.

"This robot incorporates a lot of the computer vision algorithms that we developed at the University of Dayton Vision Lab," explained UD research assistant Yakov Diskin. "The idea is to detect the face, recognize it, and if it's a person of interest someone who is a criminal maybe someone who is wanted he'll be able to follow it and eventually take appropriate actions to bring them in or notify someone of their presence."

UD Professor Vijayan Asari said the robot can not only read your facial expression, but it can also read your mind.

"The computer recognizes a certain pattern, say when I'm thinking about the robotic arm lifting, it'll recognize that pattern and send the command to the robot to do that," graduate student Kelley Cash explained.

Which could have tremendous real-world implications for people suffering from neurological disorders.

"Even somebody completely paralyzed would be able to move something and pick things up," Cash said. "It would be fantastic."