Fujitsu’s HOAP-2 robot wipes whiteboards clean — humankind next in line? (video)

They’ve taught them how to flip pancakes and shoot arrows , and now they’re teaching humanoids to erase your whiteboard. That’s right, the same folks who brought you iCub in a feathery headdress are back at it with Fujitsu’s HOAP-2, a humanoid robot that looks like it’s related to the Jetsons’ maid, and can wipe a dry erase board clean via upper-body kinesthetic learning. While scientists force the robot’s arm through a number of erasing movements, an attached force-torque sensor records the patterns, allowing HOAP-2 to mimic its previous actions, and voil