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Robots aren’t just lining up to do dangerous jobs such as helping police, fighting fires or assisting in disaster zones. They may wind up taking out the trash, too.

Researchers at Cornell University recently deployed a pair of robotic trash cans in New York to test how people would respond to them. Video of the trash cans, which were equipped with 360-degree cameras and move on retrofitted hoverboards, was presented last month at the 2023 International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. “Our video shows that people in public generally welcome the robots, that the robots encourage social interaction among strangers, that people feel pressure to generate garbage for the robots, and that people’s interactions assume the robots’ awareness of each other,” the researchers said.

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