Robots in your home a step closer

 

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Posted on 27 Nov 2008 at 11:13

Having a robot in your home that can interact with you, recognise your emotions, comfort you and help your carry out chores could soon be a reality as prototype robots are being unveiled this week.

The Feel, Interact, eXpress (Feelix) Growing project is currently showcasing a range of robots that they've developed at an event in Lyon organised by European Commission.

According to project co-ordinator Dr Lola Ca?ro of the University of Hertfordshire, the robots are still in the development stage, but could eventually be available for consumers to buy.

"The aim is to develop robots that grow up and adapt to humans in everyday environments," said Dr Ca?ro. "If robots are to be truly integrated in humans' everyday lives as companions or carers, they cannot be just taken off the shelf and put into a real-life setting, they need to live and grow interacting with humans, to adapt to their environment."

She explained that the team has different robots for different aspects of the project. Some recognise emotional expressions of people and have robotic heads with eyes, eyebrows and mouths and they can recognise a smile on a person's face, and tell if they're happy or sad, and imitate that expression. There are other robots that can recognise emotional components in the voice, and some are modelling the bond between an infant and mother.

"We're using them to explore how robots learn and recognise who is the mother and how an infant can learn new things that they've never encountered before and cope with new things that might be stressful," explained Ca?ro.

She said that the project is not going to release commercial robots just yet, but admitted that is the end application that the team would like to contribute to, and she foresees the project's robots living with people, looking after elderly people or helping people with tasks.

Author: Dawinderpal Sahota