Teaching Robots to Move Like Humans

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found that when robots move in a more human-like fashion, with one movement leading into the next, that people can not only better recognize what the robot is doing, but they can also better mimic it themselves.

Andrea Thomaz, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech's College of Computing and Ph.D. student Michael Gielniak discuss their latest study, which was presented at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 7, 2011.

For the full story see
http://digitallounge.gatech.edu/digitallife/index.html?nid=64779

Video: Rob Felt, David Terraso, Georgia Tech
Photos: Rob Felt, Georgia Tech

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Andrea Thomaz
• College of Computing
• GVU Center
• Michael Gielniak
• RIM@GT
• robot
• simon
• Georgia Tech
• HRI
• Human Robotic Interaction

[sarahjane32790]

With the help of these people. the TRANSFORMERS will come to life. lol.

[mikakrstic]

the face of the robot looks like the girl, hahaha

[8888CoolM8888]

according to me the problem is energy , why dont they make a bigger robot put a gas engine in it to produce elictrisity and go further from there

[immak4u]

i like geeky girls :D

[idividedbyzer0]

I think that it's cool that they're trying to make robots' movement more natural (as subjective as "natural" may be, there still is such a thing). Makes them that much closer to getting out of the uncanny valley.

[dcontard]

@ucdortbes I think she means the process of showing the robot performing the same act in different manners and then asking for a group of people what was the way they liked most. This may be easier to use and quantify than asking for how the same act should be made to look "natural".

[kaosgoblin]

Ugh. Robots move more efficiently than humans, to add programming to create steps that slow it down and make it look more like a human being is to destroy the advantage the robot has in its assembly movement precision. I'm all in favor of integrating robots into society, but only because they do all the jobs infinitely better.

[ucdortbes]

I could not quite make out what she means when she says that "this" is a quantitative technique, unlike something you would get from asking a group of people for feedback (as in subject group studies). I am not sure what "this" is; something other than subject group studies?

[XdoctorbutcherX]

whats "natural"? its like saying theres a correct way to walk or an inherent "human" way to walk, or the proper foot structure (which differs from western/boot/shoe foot shape vs. a hunter-gatherer who's foot is shaped differently from climbing, etc.). making the "proper" western model of a "human" seems the goal.