Light Cue 23

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The project involves building a series of robots that can take sensory input from the humans they are interacting with and then adapt their behaviour accordingly.

Dr Canamero likens the robots to babies that learn their behaviour from the patterns of movement and emotional state of the world around them.

The robots themselves are simple machines – and in some cases they are off-the-shelf machines. The most interesting aspect of the project is the software.

Dr Canamero said: “We will use very simple robots as the hardware, and for some of the machines we will build expressive heads ourselves.

“We are most interested in programming and developing behavioural capabilities, particularly in social and emotional interactions with humans.”

The robots will learn from the feedback they receive from humans.

“It’s mostly behavioural and contact feedback.

“Tactile feedback and emotional feedback through positive reinforcement, such as kind words, nice behaviour or helping the robot do something if it is stuck.”

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“One of the things we are going to use to detect expressions in faces and patterns in motion is a (artificial) neural network.”

Artificial neural networks are being used because they are very useful for adapting to changing inputs – in this case detecting patterns in behaviour, voice, movement etc.

“Neural networks learn patterns from examples of observation,” said Dr Canamero.

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“It is very important to detect when the human user is angry and the robot has done something wrong or if the human is lonely and the robot needs to cheer him or her up.

“We are focusing on emotions relevant to a baby robot that has to grow and help human with every day life.”

One of the first robots built in the project is exhibiting imprinted behaviour – which is found among birds and some mammals when born.