Coming soon, cognitive robot mates

Washington: Robots may no longer remain dumb machines performing repetitive functions programmed into them.

Researchers are now working on the concept of cognitive robotic companion, much like the i–robots in Hollywood science fiction blockbusters.

Research director at the Systems Architecture and Analysis Laboratory of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (LAAS-CNRS), and COGNIRON project coordinator, Dr Raja Chatila said that cognitive robotic technology would impart robots with adaptive learning capabilities.

It would make them very different from the dumb ‘fibre and plastic’ machines people generally associate them with.

"It’s a difficult question. The example that's often used is a robot that's able to fulfil your needs, like passing you a drink or helping in everyday tasks. That might seem a bit trivial, but let me ask you a question,’In the 1970s, what was the use of a personal computer?" Dr Chatila said.

Dr Chatila said that the key issues, or in other words, the cornerstone on which the project existed was developing intelligent behaviour in robots on a number of fronts.

"Research breaks down into four capacities required by a cognitive robot companion; perception and cognition of environment; learning by observation; decision-making; communication and interaction with humans," he added.

Organised around seven key research themes, the project studies:

• multimodal dialogues.
• Detection and understanding of human activity.
• Social behaviour and embodied interaction.
• Skill and task learning.
• Spatial cognition and multimodal situation awareness.
• Intentionality and initiative.

The seventh research theme, systems levels integration and evaluation, focuses on integrating all the other themes into a cohesive, cogitating whole, reports New Scientist.

Decision-making is a fundamental capability of a cognitive robot and integrates the three other capacities; interaction, learning and understanding the environment.

"Getting a robot to move around a human, without hurting them, and while making them feel comfortable, is a vital task. In essence a robot must pick up subtle cues. If, for instance, a human leans forward to get up, the robot needs to understand the purpose of that movement, Dr Chatila said.

What's more, much of human communication is non-verbal, and such cognitive machines need to pick up on that if they are to be useful, rather than irritating," he added.

"Even in verbal communication there are many habits robots need to acquire that are so second nature to humans that we never think of them. For example, turn taking in conversation. Humans take turns to (talk), we need to find a way to make robots do the same. A robot that keeps interrupting would get on an owner's nerves," he further said.

"In order to tackle this problem it is important develop a cognitive robot companion that learns humans by observation," Dr Chatila added.