What if your coffee mug knew your next move? Artificial intelligence researchers have succeeded in achieving this

Picture this: You’re baking cookies for the holiday, and things have gotten hectic in the kitchen. I opened the oven door, put on my oven mitts, and grabbed a hot metal tray containing warm nickeledles. She turns around to place it on the countertop and… oops, I forgot to prepare something for the tray to rest on. As you weigh your options, you notice that some of the pedestals are starting to move out of their storage space on the counter. They roll, on their own, into place.

It sounds like magic, like something out of Beauty and the Beast, but it’s a potential vision for your future kitchen, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. With the help of cameras, a variety of AI models, and some little wheels, ordinary objects can find their way to the exact place you want, without you having to search for them.

It’s easy to imagine a robot housekeeper, like Rosie from The Jetsons, but that’s not the only way robots and… artificial intelligence It could theoretically make life easier for you at home Or in the office. The same technique can be applied on a much smaller scale to things you interact with regularly — a coffee mug, a stapler, kitchen utensils, etc.

“Instead of bringing additional robots into our existing environments, what if things already in our homes that we already know could be both intelligent and robotic?” Violet Hahn, Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of A paper On the search, he said in an interview.

Read more: I’ve seen it with my own eyes: robots are here and walking among us

Big and strong Humanoid robots They give us a lot to worry about: they are heavy and powerful, and capable of causing damage if they break down. They’re approaching this uncanny valley of terror when something seems almost human. It is very difficult to get one of them to work reliably. Human ingenuity is an extraordinary feat of evolution, and we built our world on the assumption that those who move in it can do things like hold a doorknob. This is a difficult skill to give a robot. If these bots become popular, they won’t be the only thing automated.

“I find it hard to imagine that you have these robotic servants, but at the same time, everything else stays the same,” said Alexandra Ion, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, who leads the Interactive Structures Lab.

Adding artificial intelligence and mobility to the things we use solves many of these problems. It allows automation to feel more natural – you’re still using the same type of stapler, even if it has smaller wheels and seems to have a mind of its own. But there are new issues, like privacy and security, that need to be solved before a cup of coffee starts haunting you every time you yawn.

Objects in motion

If you’re going to have smart trivets that you know will roll toward you when you hold a hot tray of cookies, you need trivets that can move. For these experiments, the researchers built wheeled platforms — a round cup platform, with two wheels, motors and batteries, for example. Each one is operated by a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller. Han and Eun said a future consumer version of these objects could be specially designed to be smoother, but that’s just to prove the technology’s capabilities.

The objects themselves are not equipped with artificial intelligence. While AI models can run on small pieces of hardware, e.g Phones and WatchesIt’s really one AI system that controls the entire kitchen.

It is equipped with a camera that streams image frames to artificial intelligence models that can process and determine what is happening at a given moment. They define what a person does and identify the things that may be involved in that activity. Large linguistic models with logical skills predict what might happen next. The knowledge base encoded in the system ensures that you know some basic things about how people interact with things.

For example, “If the cup moves toward me, it’s better for me to have the handle toward me,” Hahn said.

While the idea of ​​things coming to your rescue in a crisis is an exciting one (even if the crisis itself is fairly minor), the system can help in other ways. The key drawer can rattle your keys if you’re about to leave the house without them. If you’re looking for a stapler but it’s hidden behind something on your desk, AI can move it to where you can see it. You can also use voice activation to ask your smart home to bring you the stapler.

When can you expect this in your home? The technology itself is “not too far-fetched,” but whether people actually want the equipment that makes it possible is another matter, Eon said. “If I were OK with using overhead cameras, it would be much faster to deploy them, but personally, I wouldn’t be OK with that,” she said.

One privacy solution is less technical than political. Better regulations and policies would give consumers comfort that their privacy will be protected, Eon said. Having models that can run entirely on local machines, computers that are not connected to the Internet, would also help.

What kind of robots do you want?

with Humanoid robotsIon said there is a utopian view of robot servants and a “dystopian version where your robot servant might turn evil for some reason.”

For better or worse, the idea of ​​having humanoid robots in your home is getting closer to reality. We saw that at CES 2026 Example after example Machines with arms and legs and the task of handling household tasks so you don’t have to. The results were mixed, some worked well, and… LG foldable washing robot Clothes are folded, but perhaps not as quickly and efficiently as you’d expect from Rosie from the Jetsons.

Even if the robot is not human-like, there are still concerns. In this case, should you put AI-controlled wheels on the knife? The researchers had a moving knife, but they designed it so that it moved with the blade always pointing away from the person.

“I think it’s interesting to have tension and discussion,” Eon said. “Do we not want to operate these types of objects at all?”

The goal is to ensure that when robots do things in our homes, they behave in a way that promotes safety and actually helps us do what we want to do.

“Robots are increasingly capable, for example, of: Foldable clothes“But… they have to fold the clothes the way we want them,” Han said. “Every piece of clothing may be different. It’s important for robots to not only be capable, but also to understand what the user wants and how they can best help users.”

One way it might look? Your cup of coffee determines that you are ready for another sip and begins to find its way to you.