European scientists have created a robot that can predict the intentions of humans, a development that could pave way to make interactions between humans and robots more natural. The EU-funded JAST project aimed to see if robots could “co-ordinate their work” with humans and move on with their task without being told what to do next. In effect, the researchers tried to build robots that could be less like workers and more like companions.
“In our experiments the robot is not observing to learn a task, but they observe the behaviour, map it against the task, and quickly learn to anticipate partner actions or spot errors when the partner does not follow the correct or expected procedure,” explains Wolfram Erlhagen, one of the project consortium’s research partners.
“However, the scientists cautioned that robots would have to learn some manners before they are let loose around humans. Humans know how to behave according to the context they are in. This would be difficult for a robot to understand. Nevertheless, scientists were hopeful that by refining this ability to anticipate, it should be possible to produce machines that are proactive in joint tasks and decision-making.