Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Robots Taught Human Communication Secrets
Roboticists are letting robots learn all of the secret ways that human beings share information with each other. In a recent paper, researchers at Carnegie Mellon, ATR Robotics in Kyoto and Osaka University programmed two different robots to use seemingly unintentional gestures to communicate information to human beings.
The researchers used the well-known robots Robovie (which has a stylized human-like visage) and the Geminoid robot (which has an eerily human face). The introductory abstract for their paper gives you the basic idea:
Now watch the following video, and see how well robots do in interpreting human gestures and how well the humans do in interpreting robot gestures.
"Human communication involves a number of nonverbal cues that are seemingly unintentional, unconscious, and automatic—both in their production and perception—and convey rich information on the emotional state and intentions of an individual. One family of such cues is called “nonverbal leakage.” In this paper, we explore whether people can read nonverbal leakage cues—particularly gaze cues—in humanlike robots and make inferences on robots’ intentions, and whether the physical design of the robot affects these inferences. We designed a gaze cue for Geminoid—a highly humanlike android—and Robovie—a robot with stylized, abstract humanlike features—that allowed the robots to “leak” information on what they might have in mind. In a controlled laboratory experiment, we asked participants to play a game of guessing with either of the robots and evaluated how the gaze cue affected participants’ task performance."
The researchers found that human participants did better when paired with the human-like Geminoid robot; the human subjects were also less likely to realize that they had read a cue from the Geminoid robot. This result poses an interesting challenge to roboticists, because it gives them an incentive to get closer to the "uncanny valley" discomfort that people have when confronted with a robot that is too human-like in appearance.
Robots in fiction have also learned to communicate with secretive gestures that can be non-intentional and automatic. For example, in the 2004 movie I, Robot, Sonny communicates his intentions with a subtle wink.
(Sonny winks to communicate in I, Robot)
From Nonverbal Leakage in Robots: Communication of Intentions through Seemingly Unintentional Behavior (pdf) via BotJunkie.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/4/2009)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
HandelBot Helps Two-Handed Robots Learn Piano
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
Woven Fiber Electronic Skin For Robots
'... all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.' - Harl Vincent, 1934.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
