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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?
> Advanced Social Skills For Humanoid Robots ... ...
>
> team of robotics researchers
That story should be tagged "what-could-possibly-go-wrong" ;-)
You, my friend, have hit the nail on the head. Social interaction is not defined by a behavior pattern, but by patterns driven by desires, or goals as they term them scientifically. It's great to get a press release when you figure out how to mimic some human behavior, and more great when you get a program to mimic human thought. The trouble really comes when you try to mimic humans, they are unpredictable, non-logical, and down-right antagonistic to programmatic function. Build me a robot with low self-esteem and we can have a conversation. Build me a robot that can sell used cars, we have a few months of conversation, build me a robot that can sell oil to Arabs and we have a deal. Build me a wall street robot and we have a government contract !!!
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i don't think you are giving animals enough credit. my dog will run in out of the rain and find a shady spot when it's hot. plenty of people are too stupid to even manage that much. not only that he knows when i'm pissed off at him so he scuttles off and stays away for a while, lots of people are too stupid to realise when they've annoyed another person.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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?
let me then be first to welcome our social skilled robotic overlords
God's gift to chicks
The Terminator: Hasta la vista, baby.
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
Build me a robot that ...
Personally, I'd settle for one that "looked" the part, even if all it did was say "Guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?" Or something like that.
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.
Those features can easily be programmed into a robot; all that is required is pattern matching towards a specific goal.
... "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
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 ?
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.
You don't expect that the point of this might be to create a robo-bartender, -waiter, or -maitre d' rather than a robo-partier? When you order your vodka-cranberry or Shirley Temple, the bartender needs to be able to focus on you or he won't understand what to pour you.
Besides why would you want a robot picking up the available singles at a party? Unless you want a robot that lures them away so you can knock them unconscious...
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
"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?
...welcome our extraordinarily congenial overlords.
Social behavior in humans is certainly driven by desires, but that doesn't mean a behavior pattern of enough sophistication couldn't mimic human behavior so accurately that a human couldn't distinguish between it and a real human (although I personally believe the most successful artificial human behavior will use the same drives and desires as real humans). Humans are not unpredictable or antagonistic to programmatic function. What they are is complex. They are seemingly unpredictable because they are more complex than we have the means to explain at this time.
There was a time when science couldn't explain the motion of the planets. There was a time when science couldn't explain the functioning of biological organisms. We can explain those now. Yes, humans are the most complex, but to think that we are so special that we are somehow "outside" nature is hubris. Someday we will laugh at the time in our past when people thought that humans were somehow something new in nature that would never be explainable or simulatable.
"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?
There are plenty of wallstreet robots. The famous leaked source code for goldman sachs's analytics bot is one of them. Most of our economy is run by machines already. The human factor only comes in from massive amount of small investors, which makes the market less predictable. Even so, there are machines that can analyze emotional level of the masses and make a fairly accurate prediction.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
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
You mis-understood me. I'm not saying that they are stupid, it's that people won't treat them as an equal on an intelligent level. How smart they are isn't the same as how smart and or equal they are perceived and thats what I mean.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
you should have gotten points
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I consider this post disturbingly prophetic...
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.