Developing the 'social robot'

SCIENCE:The nannies of this world are in trouble, even if they don't know it yet. New research in California has shown that for toddlers, a robot is as good at providing interesting and engaging company as an adult, writes Dick Ahlstrom

Fumihide Tanaka and colleagues from the University of San Diego let a companion robot loose amongst a classroom of toddlers to see how they would get on. Not only did the kids take to the robot, their interaction with it increased over time.

The cynics might say that of course the robot would automatically have the edge - a nanny expects at least minimum wage and a taxi home. But parents naturally expect more.

They expect their child minders to lavish hours of attention on the tot, reading books, playing games, building Duplo castles, all this even if the parents don't have the time or energy to do any of this themselves. Nanny is getting minimum wage after all.

Of course the story-telling angle has already been dealt with by robots. The most successful robot-toddler relations have been achieved with story-telling robots that have arms able to gesticulate wildly.

Yet these marvels were only able to engage a toddler for about 10 hours before boredom set in and the kids found the switch.

Tanaka decided to take a different approach, developing the "social" robot. The robot is able to giggle and dance and turn its head, the repertoire of most politicians during election time. The real trick though, was these actions were initiated by a remote human operator, allowing the robot to interact in real time with the kids.

The little ones took to it, increasing their social contact with the robot over time. If nothing else, the experiment showed it is as easy to trick a toddler with a bit of head turning and giggling as it is the electorate. Interestingly, if the robot was preprogrammed to deliver these actions randomly, the toddlers quickly lost interest. They became interested again once the interactive mode was resumed.

How do you know the kids were impressed? Tanaka based this on video recordings of their responses, which mainly came down to touch. They would touch the robot's face, arms and hands, with more contact showing the more interested they were. He and his research group are now developing autonomous robots for the toddler classroom, according to the research report which is published in the current US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This robot application seems miles from their more familiar turf in the world of innovative manufacturing-building things, packing boxes, stacking cases and so forth. But the technology employed is all very similar - small motors and sensors to control movement, memory to allow repetition and varying levels of autonomy largely overseen by a limited dollop of artificial intelligence.

There are an estimated one million robots around the world, most of them exceedingly boring mechanical welding arms and electronic circuit board stuffers. None of them would be worth a damn to any self-respecting toddler, but they are all employed in regular jobs.

Yet robot development internationally is racing far ahead of nannybots and Rosie-the-riveter-bots in manufacturing.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), in the US, runs a competition that encourages groups to develop cars that drive themselves. Darpa's last challenge, in 2004, to develop autonomous cars that could drive safely from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, failed miserably. None of the contestants managed the 270 miles.

Its latest challenge is to develop autonomous cars that can negotiate an urban landscape constructed on a disused air field. The cars must avoid obstacles, but also dodge human-driven cars that run interference and do what human drivers do best - make stupid, unexpected moves.

This competition isn't run because Darpa is a bunch of fun guys with a crazy idea to develop "autonomous vehicle technology". Darpa is an agency within the US Department of Defence. It was formed in a panic to develop advanced technologies after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957.

The US Department of Defence wants half its military vehicles to be free of human control by 2015 and believes the competition might throw up the technologies to achieve this goal. If Darpa is involved, then robotics must be a serious business.

The spooks are less interested in other useful types of robots, the kind that can mow your grass and then repark themselves in the battery charger or the ones that are willing to struggle through sewer pipes looking for cracks, or worse still, blockages.

But the nannybots would be a valuable addition to the pantheon of robots, provided Tanaka and his team can deliver the goods. It could be programmed to ensure it wouldn't smack the kids while the parents were out (unless the corporal punishment switch is reset) and wouldn't dip into the sherry when your back was turned. Now that is innovation.