NEW YORK (WENY) -- Coffee pots, lights, toasters and even cars are becoming automated in today's society, but researchers say many of the machines struggle dealing with the 'randomness' of humanity. Researchers at Cornell University are looking into ways to perfect the automated systems. They are starting by picking up trash.

"The thing about designing interaction with automated systems is a lot of times what happens, people just build and program a robot and they put it in the world and see what happens. What normally happens is, it goes poorly," said Wendy Ju, an associate professor at Cornell University who worked on the project.

Her team, made up of doctoral students, attached a camera and robotic wheels to both a recycling and garbage pail. The machines were placed in a crowded square in New York City to see how humans interact with the robots. 

"People will just talk to the robots, even if the robots aren't talking to them, and they expect that the robots can both see and hear," Ju said.

Researchers say many expected the trashcans to know the difference between a full and empty cup, as many would wave the cup to show the trashcan that it was either empty or full, expecting it to interpret that. 

"They expect the garbage can to make sense of that, which is a really fascinating thing," said Ju.

The garbage cans could not make sense of the difference, but the people behind the cameras could. These cans were not controlled by artificial intelligence. Researchers were nearby monitoring the garbage cans and drove them remotely through joysticks. 

This experiment is the start of years-long research as scientists try to perfect an augmented robot to help humans with daily tasks. 

Even though those involved in the experiment say it was a success, they say they are not ready to start replacing janitor's jobs.

"There's not a way that any robot we can build is going to do what those people are doing. We could completely change neighborhoods, so that garbage was more easily sucked up by the infrastructure, but if you don't do that, It's almost impossible," Ju said.

Researchers tell WENY, they want to try this experiment in different places around the globe to work on a way for robots to help, not hinder people. At some point, they say there is not a finite way to completely automate a robot without some human intervention.