Professor Charlie Kemp and Advait Jain at Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Laboratory have programmed a robot to autonomously approach and open doors and drawers.

It does that using omni-directional wheels and compliant arms, and the only information it needs is the location and orientation of the handles. The researchers discussed their results at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, held May 3rd – 8th in Anchorage, Alaska, where they presented a paper, "Pulling Open Doors and Drawers: Coordinating an Omni-Directional Base and a Compliant Arm with Equilibrium Point Control.