A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology described their recently published study as the first serious attempt for understanding what it means for both humans and machines, specifically robots, to have social interaction.
As specified in a TechCrunch report, politeness does not quantify too much when programmed to get from point A to point B. However, if robots are to play an augmented role in human society, questions appear about how they will get along with others, particularly humans.
In the new research paper, Boris Katz, MIT CSAIL research scientist, said robots will live in this world soon enough, and they indeed need to learn how to communicate using human terms.
He added these robots need to understand "when it is time to help" and when it's time for them to find out what they can do to prevent an occurrence from taking place.
'Realistic and Predictable' Interactions Between Robots
The validity of such a claim may be up for a heated discussion. The problem it is attempting to address on a daily stage is undoubtedly roboticists will increasingly regard it as robots start playing an outsized role in people's lives.
To develop what the study authors deemed "realistic and predictable" interactions between robots, the authors carried out tests in a simulated environment.
In this simulation, one robot is watching another perform a task, tries to identify the goal, and either try to help or impede it in that particular task.
In a statement, Ravi Tejwani, a fellow project said, they have opened a new mathematical concept for how the interaction between two agents is modeled.
A Relatively Simple 2D Simulation
Tejwani explained that if one is a robot and wants to go to "location X, and I am another robot." He sees that the other robot is trying to go to location X; he can show cooperation by helping get to location X quicker.
That might mean he continued the fellow project lead, moving X closer, finding another better X, or taking any kind of action needed to take at X.
The researchers' new formulation enables the plan to explore the "how"; they specify the "what" in terms of what social interactions mathematically means.
The framework is currently a relatively simple 2D simulation. The researchers are moving ahead with the 3D edition while adding a neural network-based reboot planner to enhance the speed with which the robots are learning from such actions.
Robots Trained to Socialize
A TechXP report specified that in a Bengaluru school, disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence or AI are "infiltrating classrooms or humanoid robots" that teach students and interact with them in the same way that teachers do.
According to the Indus International School Chief Design Officer Vignesh Rao, their robots teach approximately 300 children in Classes 7 to 9 each day, in five disciplines and four sessions by turn.
The said robots are talking to the pupils and answering queries about the courses, Rao explained. Nonetheless, the five-foot-seven-inch robots, wearing the conventional female outfit, do not replace genuine educators.
They supplement them instead in exhibiting examples in the subjects and answering frequently asked questions from understudies.
Related information about robot-human interaction is shown on Bani Anvari's YouTube video below:
RELATED ARTICLE : Robotic 'Third Thumb' Impact People's Brains, Allows a Person to Do More
Check out more news and information on Robotics in Science Times.
