Autonomous City Explorer (or ACE) a robot that navigated the mean streets of Munich just like any tourist would: by asking directions from the natives.

First, there are cameras and image recognition software geared towards finding people and moving ACE towards them.

When a human is found, an audio message is played while virtual lips move on a screen. If the human is friendly (aren’t we all?) he or she uses a touch-screen to indicate it’s willingness to give directions.

And ACE follows your finger! That’s really kind of cool.

By using multiple cameras and more image software, ACE is able to build a 3D model of the human and where he or she is actually pointing to.

ACE’s point and go navigation avoids the hassle of interpreting humanity’s subjective audible directions. “It’s over there, behind that building, then you sort of take a right and keep going for a while.” —that’s a message fit to make a robot pull its hair out.