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What Should a Robot's Face Look Like?
At some point, we'll all have assistive robots in our homes. Even the most optimistic projections (and we're not responsible for any of those) put it a ways out, and the first place these robots will show up will likely be in an elder care capacity as opposed to doing our laundry. There has been a lot of (appropriate) emphasis on function, but form is very important as well, and the big question (or one of them, at least) is how human we should try to make these robots, and how much it matters.
Akanksha Prakash, a graduate student at Georgia Tech's School of Psychology, conducted a study to try and figure out how human robots should be. For a given task, participants of different ages where shown a series of three images consisting of a human face, a robotic face, or a mixture of the two, and asked which they'd be most comfortable interacting with.
“We found that participants, both younger and older, will assign emotional traits to a robot based on its face, which will determine what they are most comfortable interacting with,” said Prakash. “As a result, preferences for robotic appearance varied across tasks.”
Interestingly, there was a difference between the features people desired in robots performing decision-making tasks versus social tasks: for example, for robotic investment advice, younger participants liked a mixed human-robot appearance, while older adults tended to prefer a more human face. And for the social tasks, both age groups preferred a more human face.
Personal care tasks such as bathing provoked the most divisive preferences within both age groups. Those who chose a human face did so because they associated the robot with human-like care capabilities—such as nursing—and trustworthy traits. Many others didn’t want anything looking like a human to bathe them due to the private nature of the task. “Sometimes personal care can get pretty involved. Many participants said they would rather have an impersonal looking creature caring for their personal needs,” Prakash said.
We're going to need a lot more research like this before we get effective humanoid robotics in the home, if for no other reason than any robot that humans aren't comfortable using isn't going to be a commercial success. However, I'm personally not entirely convinced that these people really dowant a robot with a face like a human. Study participants were shown images, not videos, and the Uncanny Valley gets a lot deeper when you throw motion into the mix.
It's also going to be very important to establish whether it's a human-like face that people respond to, as opposed to just human features. WALL-E (to take just one example) had human features (eyes and eyebrows) that provided a huge range of expression while staying safely out of the Uncanny Valley. Would humans really prefer something borderline creepy for social tasks, even if at first glance they think that they might be more comfortable with it? Again, more research is going to be needed, but my guess is that when robots enter our homes, they're not going to look much like us at all.
[ Human Factors and Aging Lab ] via [ Georgia Tech ]
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/how-human-should-assistive-robots-look
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
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Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
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• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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