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The advent of robots capable of talking to us

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The advent of robots capable of talking to us

Traditional humanoid robotics at this time focuses primarily on movement andfacial expressiveness. In fact, it is important that these machines, in their transition from factory to home environments, assume more and more physical characteristics familiar to human beings, on the one hand for look more “natural” in terms of relationships with people, and on the other hand for ergonomic issues, that is, to better adapt to environments designed and created for human beings.

When we ask a robot to load the dishwasher, and sooner or later it will happen, the machine will benefit from having an anthropomorphic appearance, because it will be able to move in the domestic space just like a human being would. In this way, therefore, a compatibility of spaces with people will be guaranteed, and this will probably be a very appreciated feature especially for robot so-called “generalists”, that is machines capable of carrying out numerous different tasks in our homes and able to move in our spaces exactly as we do.

Before arriving at generalist home robotics, however, it will be necessary to go through specialized machines for single tasks and not anthropomorphic ones, and this will generate some inefficiency both in the available functionalities, very different from those desirable, both in costs, and in the spaces necessary to place these machines when they will not be used.

Man-machine communication

Beyond the mechanical, robotic and functional characteristics available, the problem of direct communication with these machines. It is natural to think that we will relate to them in natural language, a bit like today we try to do, sometimes with little success, with the most famous voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.

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Voice-related technologies already represent an excellent tool to simplify some somewhat trivial, even if useful, tasks, such as setting timers and alarms, managing shopping lists, asking for information or putting on some music.

It is inevitable that in the near future the two directions, home robotics and natural language communication, will converge to equip machines with an interaction with people that is as similar as possible to that which occurs between humans.

It will therefore be possible to ask for the now fateful “Alexa, load the dishwasher” having the certainty, or at least the well-founded hope, that the generalist machine is able to perform the task in the best way, and this will apply to most of the tasks. household, boring and immeasurable waste of our time.

Conversational robots

We will then come to “conversational robots”, that is machines capable of performing physical actions and, at the same time, of conversing in natural language with human beings and obviously this second feature can be used in many fields, regardless of the ability to move and perform numerous tasks in our home or in our offices.

One of the first to experiment with this relational model was Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro, who works in the department of adaptive machines at Osaka University. Among the various experiments with anthropomorphic robots, Ishiguro already a few years ago created the CommU and Sota robots, small machines capable of communicating in natural language in Japanese and English, so efficient that they are considered an excellent tool for teaching English to children. Japanese.

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Little Sophia, the most promising robot

Over time, many steps have been made, up to a very promising machine, it is the smaller version of the anthropomorphic robot Sophia and its name is Little Sophia, made by Hanson Robotics.

This reduced version of Sophia, undoubtedly one of the most promising projects in terms of anthropomorphic and expressive robotics, is actually not a very recent project, we are talking about a design started in 2019, but the first ones should see the light only at the end of this year. copies financed through a special Kickstarter project.

It is a machine about 35 cm high and was designed to be a kind of support teacher for children between 7 and 14 years, and in particular to help them in the study of science subjects. It is a machine that incorporates many of the features of its older sister Sophia, in particular it is able to walk, to speak, to sing (we do not yet know with what results), to tell jokes.

He is able to react very empathically to the voice commands he receives and is able to express emotions and feelings, such as sadness, happiness and surprise, all skills that will help improve the teaching experience.

Little Sophia is designed to teach STEM subjects to children, but in reality the same model can be applied to converse about any subject with humans, to teach any subject, with different degrees of complexity, to heterogeneous portions of the population, starting with from children with scientific subjects, to the teaching of humanities to any type of student.

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Even in the field of conversational robotics we are only at the beginning.

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