Robot: Answer Me Now!
In the near future, we’ll begin issuing commands to our home robots by voice. But this will soon evolve beyond the mere one-way issuance of orders. For robots to be truly useful in our homes. it will be imperative that we be able to carry on actual conversations with them. But, just as you have no patience for slow response times on your computer now, researchers have found that you likewise will have no patience from a slow-to-respond robot. Even if that means filling awkward moments of silence with small talk, as your robot is thinking, humans need to receive near-immediate input. Toshiyuki Shiwa and colleagues at the ATR laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, set out to find out just how quickly domestic robots should respond to their owners’ requests by asking 38 students to give orders to a robot. The robot was set to respond in from anywhere from zero to 5 seconds. The students’ patience began to run out after 2 seconds, with 1 second being the optimal response time. However, and this is very interesting, the impatient students were okay with a slower response time if the robot filled in the time with “filler” words, such as “well” or “er.” When the this occurred, people did not notice the delay. In other word’s, make the robots more human-like. Uh, yeah, um, like, I agree. The study was presented at Human-Robot Interaction 2008 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
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by The Incredibly Creepy, Incredibly Cool Modular Robot Snake
Home robots of the future are going to come in every shape and size, as there is no one form that will be suitable for every task. So, what would you think about a robot taking the form of a snake? Think about the applications from investigating your sewers, air ducts and all sorts of tight places. Or what about a security robot guaranteed to scare the heck out of an intruder while he crawls up his leg? The Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science’s Robotics Institute Biorobotics Laboratory is developing modular snake robots whose highly articulated devices can perform a variety of locomotion capabilities that go beyond the capabilities of conventional wheeled and the recently developed legged robots. Watch the video and think of all the possibilities.
Read MoreWill your Home Robots Always be Truthful?
Last night I was watching the excellent new series, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. The super-sexy robot from the future, Cameron, played by the lovely Summer Glau, was asked by John Conner if she would ever lie to him. She matter-of-factly said yes, she would. He was her why and she responded that she would lie if it helped her mission. Needless to say, John Conner was taken back by that. Someday soon, you too will have robots in your home. While they hopefully will not be a human-killing machine like Cameron, they will none-the-less be your trusted servants or companions. How much would faith will you place in their veracity? The work of Dario Floreano et al. on the use of evolutionary algorithms for evolving robots shows that some robots actually learn to lie by giving other robots deceptive information about food location.
Read MoreSoftbot: A Step Toward Soft-bodied Robots
For robots to become more lifelike, they are going to need to replace their metallic “skin” and hard bodies with a more pliable and soft membrane. There have been various research projects that are currently in the works, and a new promising project is called the Softbot is now underway at Tufts Biomimetic Devices Laboratory. Their goal is to carry out research into biologically-based technologies that use soft materials not only for skin, but for the body as well.
Read MoreTeaching Baby Robot to Talk
Parents instinctively and naturally teach babies how to talk, but how does that work, exactly? Researchers at at the University of Plymouth will try to find out. Over the next four years robotics experts will work with language development specialists will work with a one meter tall humanoid baby robot named iCub in an attempt to discover exactly how language development works.
Read MoreThe Robot Form Factor Debate
Do consumers have a preference of human-looking or robotic-looking robots? New research provides some answers and, interestingly, it is based upon personality types. A team led by Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Computer Science concludes that people with more extrovert personalities tend to choose more human-looking and human-sounding, humanoid robots, while more introverted people tend to prefer mechanical-looking robots which by, the way, very well could have a head, but a metal head.
Read MoreIf a Monkey can do it, so can you
For robots to become truly helpful in our homes, they need to not only think for themselves, but they need to be able to communicate with their owners more easily. We’ll need to go beyond programming or controlling them through a remote or computer. Beyond voice. Beyond voice? What would that be? Mind control. Your mind to the robot’s mind. It may be closer than you think. A monkey shows us how.
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