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Japanese boffins create robo-child |
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Written by Nick Farrell
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Tuesday, 07 April 2009 10:19 |
As scary as the real thing
Japanese
boffins have developed a robot which slowly develops social skills by
interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions.
The robot
which looks like a anaemic child dangles its legs from a chair as its
shoulders rise and fall with rythmic breathing and its black eyes follow
movements across the room. Osaka University professor Minoru Asada said that
human babies have limited software programs but have room to learn new
routines. What he wants to do is try to get the android to think like a
baby who evaluates its mother's countless facial expressions and "clusters"
them into basic categories, such as happiness and sadness.
The robot has
197 film-like pressure sensors under its light grey rubbery skin, CB2 can
also recognise human touch, such as stroking of its head. It can record
emotional expressions using eye-cameras, then memorise and match them with
physical sensations, and cluster them on its circuit boards.
It has taken the
baby two years to teach itself how to walk with the aid of a human and can
now move its body through a room quite smoothly, using 51 "muscles" driven
by air pressure. The boffins next goal is to have the robot talking in basic
sentences.
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