Bridging the Gap Between Robot Designs and Humans

The modern century is witnessing many new robot designs popping into existence almost every day. The increase in the creation of robots and animatronics have prompted people asking questions about the future of human employees/workers. More importantly, if robots do become a part of our everyday lives, how are we to interact with them?

This question has intrigued many great minds in the past also. As robots become more commonplace and capable of performing complex tasks with ease independently, it is imperative to think about how robots will communicate with humans.

In this blog we shall discuss:

How engineers are making the ‘robots of tomorrow’

From the physiological aspects, experts who are into the field of robot design, are making robots which have a close resemblance to humans. And this has psychological implications too! These kinds of robots have an industrially designed shell as well as are bipedal and have two arms with a shorter height than an average human. Of course, Boston Dynamics “Atlas” (amazing) robot comes immediately to mind. Also, the robots do not include a realistic human face (think about the terrifying robot design of Uncanny Valley!) but a “normal” robotic face. Coming to the semantic aspect of building a robot, engineers are making a note of everything when humans talk to each other – from facial expressions to the cadence of a person’s voice to convey the real information. For example: Rethink Robotics has developed a project named ‘Baxter’ which makes the use of a pair of eyes placed on the screen; the eyes tell people what it will do next. The whole robot is on a pivot that allows it to divert its attention to one of its two arms before performing any action. This informs the bystanders of the kind of motion is it doing. These robot designs can pick the social cues of humans even before anything has happened. Dr. Julie Shah, the head of MIT’s Interactive Robotics Group has incorporated machine learning techniques to build a robot that can anticipate what a human is planning to do after evaluating the indications.

Robots to form the next ecology of non-humans?

Robot designs are on to the next level already. Robots are already being created that can naturally interact with humans. You won’t feel even once that you are speaking to a robot! The phenomenal semi-intelligent spoken language systems like Siri, Cortana, Alexa and others are already popular. Robots are being created to be proficient in doing manual labor; they can do complex physically strenuous tasks with ease. Customer service positions are one of the prime areas where robot designs and creations are getting implemented since technological advances are helping the robots to be a pro in interacting with humans. Mario, a robot built and tested in Belgium, is the perfect concierge who hands the rooms keys to the guests as well as high-fives with them!

Conclusion: Robot designs are on their way in becoming more like humans but still they have a long way to go. We certainly cannot expect them to have certain human traits like emotions and sympathy. So all we can wish is to have a peaceful co-existence with both the humans and robots alike. To know more about our robot design services, call us on +018014104869 .