Category Archives: Robots and Society

It's Written on Your Face

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Check out this video explaining what makes human faces so special and how this relates to a European robotics project

Our faces paint a portrait of our inner emotions for the rest of the world to see. Whether we like it or not, our facial expressions give others information about the way we are feeling. A stranger’s smile might cause you to smile back and start a friendly conversation with them during a ride on the metro, while another’s scowl might be a good indicator they’re not in the mood to talk. As subtle as these non-verbal cues may seem,
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Cognitive Automobiles

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Image: Craig ONeil

Take a ride in a car with reasoning abilities

Rüdiger Dillmann and his team at the Humanoids and Intelligent Systems Lab at the Karlsruhe  Institute of Technology are working on creating cognitive automobiles that have an understanding of traffic situations and can respond accordingly.
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Racy times with Roxxxy

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Let’s talk about sex (with robots)

7000 USD can now buy you alternative forms of intimacy with a companion/sex robot developed by the American company TrueCompanion. Some people may find the idea of this revolting, perverted or just plain weird but with sexuality playing such a fundamental role in our lives
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What Will it Take to Make a Machine Conscious?

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While intelligent machines are capable of defeating the chess and jeopardy pros, there are tasks a six year old can beat them at in seconds

When we look at the picture on the left, it’s obvious that something’s wrong with the picture on the bottom. The human brain’s capability to integrate knowledge is what allows us to recognize that  keyboards and computers fit well together while plants and computers… not so much.

Christof Koch, Cognitive and behavioural biology professor at the California Institute of Technology and Giulio Tononi, professor in consciousness science at
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Robot Film Festival

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Check out this group on Vimeo to see some videos featured in a Robot Film Festival held in New York City on July 16th and 17th, 2011

The annual festival doesn’t just aim to showcase awesome robots, it also aims to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration by providing an opportunity for researchers to translate their work to the general population and help explore the ethical and sociological issues everyday robots could have on society

Get Down With Your Cyborg Side

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Image: Olishaw

According to writer, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, being a  cyborg is just part of human nature

Generally, the term cyborg refers to a biological being whose capabilities have been enhanced by or are dependent on a machine.
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Give Yourself a Hug…With the Help of a Robot

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Watch a clip from Tokyo’s 3D Expo

Nobuhiro Takahashi and his team at the University of Electro Communications in Tokyo have created a huggable robot. The ¨Sense-Roid¨ is shaped like a human torso that is embedded with pressure sensors. The robot is capable of reciprocating a human’s hug with the help of air compressors by being connected to a jacket that is worn by the human user.

 

Beyond the Body

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The Multimodal Brain Orchestra

Visual art, music and dance allow people to express their emotional experiences and put them on display for others. By using their bodies people produce masterpiece paintings, play glorious symphonies or put on amazing dance recitals but what would happen if we took our bodies out of the equation? This is what the Multimodal Brain Orchestra created by the Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems (SPECS) group at the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona wanted to investigate.
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¨不気味の谷現象¨

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Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan and his twin robot

When robots become too real, our approval takes a plunge into ¨The Uncanny Valley¨

Coined by robotics professor Masahiro Mori, ¨The Uncanny Valley¨ is a phenomenon that describes our aversion to robots and or artificial beings after they reach a certain level of human likeness.  Many people such as Sigmund Freud and Ernst Jentsch have explored the concept of ¨the uncanny¨
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iCub

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The famed European robot has made itself a home in laboratories around the globe

iCub is a robot capable of  interacting with the world much the way a small child does . It is used to look at how experience and the learning of physical acts can affect the development of cognition.  Among other capabilities, iCub is able to:  crawl, grasp objects and express emotion through facial expressions.  Check out the article in nature featuring the icub project leader Giulio Sandini who is also the founder of the LIRA-Lab (Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics) at the University of Genoa and director of research in the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences department at IIT (the Italian Institute of Technology). Giulio is also a consortium member of the Coordination Action of the Robot Companions for Citizens FET Flagship Initiative.