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Advanced Social Skills For Humanoid Robots
Lanxon writes "A pan-European team of robotics researchers began a project this year that could see humanoid bots interact with groups of people in a realistic, anthropomorphic way for the first time. The 'humanoids with auditory and visual abilities in populated spaces' (HUMAVIPS) project has the ambitious goal of making humanoid bots just a bit more human by building algorithms that will enable bots to mimic what psychologists call the 'cocktail party effect' — the human ability to focus attention on just one person in the midst of other people, voices and background noise."
soon robots will have better social skills than I do?
In Star Wars, we are introduced to two primary types of robots. One is a protocol droid, the other is much more utilitarian (a mechanical JS Mill, if you will). The protocol droid is almost completely useless. It is insecure, fragile, and clumsy. The utility droid is clever, handy, and quick.
Why are we working so hard on creating protocol droids when utility droids are so much better?
"The human ability to focus attention on just one person in the midst of other people, voices and background noise."
But the title says "advanced social skills".
Is your robot going to sit there sipping a drink, nodding and smiling? I can make a retard do that.
If your robot going to sit there, chugging a brewski, yelling "WHAT? WHAT? YEAH THAT SOUNDS COOL!"? I can make a drunk frat boy do that.
Here's a tip, researchers: HUMANS don't have the ability* to focus on one person at a cocktail party. Humans focus on the booze, the snacks, and the sex. We don't give a fucking shit about whatever mindless story some guy is telling (for the 20th time).
*In cases where we are able (not loud, person talking is coherent, available food is too shitty to be distracting), we are smart enough to choose not to.
Make a robot that picks up chicks, then we'll talk.
> Advanced Social Skills For Humanoid Robots ... ...
>
> team of robotics researchers
That story should be tagged "what-could-possibly-go-wrong" ;-)
Doesn't matter how much you make them talk and respond like a person. As long as someone know they aren't talking to an equally intelligent human, they won't address it as fully intelligent. Think of people talking to little children, baby's and animals. Baby talk or at least being a little more patient and phrasing things a little more simple to understand. And if they won't talk to the robot like a normal person and 'dumb down' they conversion with them, the computer will have to look for very subtle clues of what to ignore and to expand upon or just dumb down the conversion to the level they are being spoken to which defeats the idea of this. Until robots can pass for human in movement and appearance, its just a bad loop.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
But you might also be able to install some software that would give you suggestions on how to make you more social, so it's not all bad.
Will definitely lead to more advanced trolling than man can ever aspire to.
Geeks teaching robots social skills. The jokes just write themselves.
Knowing the average nerd has no social skill, how about making those cocktail-party-robots trainers for us nerds ? Think about it. Personal Social Home Trainer. Now with opposite-sex-target-locking mode.
What about advanced social skills for MEEEEEEEEEEE?
Can we use this technology on brain implants?
Robotics researchers programming social skills....lets face it, if they had social skills, most of them wouldn't be in robotics.
let me then be first to welcome our social skilled robotic overlords
God's gift to chicks
The Terminator: Hasta la vista, baby.
Where do people go after coctail parties, and what do they do? Finally, we know what the first software upgrade will be for the sexbot they launched in Las Vegas. Talk about perfect hostess (or host, if you prefer - that's another mod).
focusing on one person in a crowded room, being able to hear what one person is saying despite a lot of other talking and background noise I don't care about? I don't have that super-power, where do I sign up?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I think the small part of my brain that handles irony just segfaulted
Just checked through the research proposal (not much info, sadly), and am both disappointed and pleased.
First of all, there is almost nothing new on what the researchers want to do there.
Cocktail party problem has been described and aimed at a gazilion times, and many groups have been dealing with that kinds of problems, even in the context of robotics (see work at Honda in Germany).
Already at the end of the 90s, people at MIT people were already researching in attention systems.
On the other hand, finally roboticists are focusing on relaxing the severe scenario constraints they put into their systems so that the algorithms can work, instead of going for the small delta in the "cognitive" ability that grants them the next paper, but does not solve the underlying problems.
Robotics needs to face the same real world we and the animals do (e.g. Boston Dynamics's big dog), before we can speak of any type of intelligence.
And for that, I'm glad they get my taxpayer euros.
Now if only I could master those 'advanced social skills' as well...
I am not really here right now.
... "the human ability to focus attention on just one person in the midst of other people, voices and background noise."
I don't think this is a strictly "human" trait. My dog doesn't have a problem listening to me over other people calling his name at the same time. Whether he can partake in the utter waste of time called "small talk" is still, however, unknown to me.
Is it really a necessity for my future sexbot to have social skills? I'm sure there'll be a 'conversationalist bot' when the need calls for one.
We are trying to create Rommie from Andromeda - hubba hubba!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Robots will have better social skills than I do.
Robot stole my girlfriend! :(
Now she only wants to talk to him, she never talks to me anymore.
From TFA:
NAO comes with a 500MHz CPU, although an improved head with double the computing power is expected before the end of the year.
At least they are smart enough to put the CPU in the head. This makes the robot easier to disable once it starts using its new-found social skills to ask about the location of Sarah Connor.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I think the small part of my brain that handles irony just segfaulted
If you're at a cocktail party and need to take a core dump, it is considered good manners to excuse yourself, explain where you are going but not in any great detail what you are doing there, and then taking said core dump in private.
In other words: // TODO: skip the wait queue? // FEATURE: dumps core // BUG: never reached
printf("Sorry, I'll have to go to the bathroom\n");
while(not at_bathroom()) move_to_bathroom();
mutex_lock(bathroom_door);
char *p = 0; *p = 0;
mutex_unlock(bathroom_door);
return;
I wonder if this auto-posting software will ever become sentient, and pass the Turing test ?
"to focus attention on just one person in the midst of other people, voices and background noise."
They want a computer algorithm that can single out a specific voice in a crowded area and convert it to a text feed...
Who thinks this will be of more interest to the intelligence community than the we-just-want-to-build-a-friendlier-robot comunity?
Considering how most of us nerds likely have some form of autism, why don't we get these social skills instead?
...welcome our extraordinarily congenial overlords.
"Welcome, stranger."
"Oh, hi."
"What are ya buyin'?"
"Nothin'."
"What are ya sellin'?"
"Nothin'."
"Come back anytime."
"Oh, OK."
"Welcome, stranger."
"Aaah!"
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Looking forward to getting mine!
This is not the first example of this and the article is factually wrong. There is on they have been working on in Hollywood for quite a while that was featured on Scientific America on PBS.
Ruben
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com