Recently, The Kavli Foundation brought together three pioneers in Human-Robot Interactions to discuss these advancements, as well as the upcoming technological hurdles. What they say is that, while there are many challenges ahead, the biggest remains getting the robots to match the needs and expectations of the human mind. \u201cHow we interact with embodied machines is different than how we interact with a computer, cell phone or other intelligent devices,\u201d says Professor Maja Matari?, University of Southern California. \u201cWe need to understand those differences so we can leverage what is important.\u201d<\/p>\n A director of USC\u2019s Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems, Matari? has developed social robots for use in a variety of therapeutic roles. According to Matari?, one of the keys for a successfully designed social robot is considering not only how it communications verbally, but physically through facial expressions and body language. Also important: embedding the right personality. \u201cWe found that when we matched the personality of the robot to that of the user, people performed their rehab exercises longer and reported enjoying them more<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Another key is matching a robot\u2019s appearance to our perception of its abilities<\/strong>. Ayse Saygin is an assistant professor at the University of California San Diego and faculty member of the Kavli Institute of Brain and Mind. Last year, Saygin and her colleagues set out to discover if what they call the \u201caction perception system\u201d in the human brain is tuned more to human appearance or human motion. By using brain scans, they found that as people observed highly humanlike robots compared to less humanlike robots, the brain detected the mismatch and didn\u2019t respond as well<\/strong>. \u201cMaking robots more humanlike might seem intuitively like that\u2019s the way to go, but we find it doesn\u2019t work unless the humanlike appearance is equally matched with humanlike actions.\u201d<\/p>\n A social robot also needs the ability to learn socially. Andrea Thomaz is an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and director of its Social Intelligent Machines Laboratory. At her lab, they have built a robot designed to learn from humans the way a person would — along with speech, through observation, demonstration and social interaction. “In my lab, we see human social intelligence as being comprised of four key components \u2013 the ability to learn from other people, the ability to collaborate with other people, the ability to apply emotional intelligence, and the ability to perceive and respond to another person\u2019s intentions<\/strong>. We try to build this social intelligence in our robots.”<\/p>\n Read the complete roundtable discussion at: http:\/\/www.kavlifoundation.org\/science-spotlights\/ucsd-recipe-social-robot<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Kavli Foundation press release via ScienceDaily: After years of existing only in fiction, social robots are finally being designed that can more closely emulate how people express themselves,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,10,6],"tags":[188,71,72,42,363,32,12,98],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/ChildwithRobot.jpg\" "\\"robot\\"")
After years of existing only in fiction, social robots are finally being designed that can more closely emulate how people express themselves, interact and learn \u2013 and doing so while performing jobs like teaching social behavior to children with autism or helping stroke patients with their physical rehabilitation exercises<\/strong>.<\/p>\n