London, June 11: European scientists have created a robot that can predict the intentions of humans, a development that could pave the way to make interactions between human and robot more natural.
The EU-funded JAST project aimed to see whether human and robot could "coordinate their work" and move on with its task without being told what to do next. In effect, the
researchers tried to build robots that could be less like workers and more like companions.
"In our experiments the robot is not observing to learn a task," explains Wolfram Erlhagen, one of the project consortium's research partners.
"The JAST robots already know the task, but they observe behaviour, map it against the task, and quickly learn to anticipate [partner actions] or spot errors when the
partner does not follow the correct or expected procedure," stressed Erlhagen, from the University of Minho in Protugal.
The robot, by observing how its human partner grasped a tool or model part, was able to predict how he intended to use it. Clues like these helped the robot to anticipate what
its partner might need next, the Science Daily online reported.
"Anticipation permits fluid interaction," said Erlhagen. "The robot does not have to see the outcome of the action before it is able to select the next item," he stressed.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 14:55