The Human Touch, in Robots
From: A*STAR Research - 01/21/2011
By: Lee Swee Heng 

Researchers at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing are
developing robots that can respond directly to human speech. "When robots
come to live in a human space, we need to take care of many more things than
for manufacturing robots installed on the factory floor," says A*STAR
researcher Haizhou Li. He leads the ASORO program, which has developed seven
robots since 2008, including a robot butler, a robot home assistant, and
OLIVIA, a robot receptionist that also serves as a research platform for
studying social robotics technologies. OLIVIA can track human faces, eyes,
and lip movements, as well as locate the source of human speech using
head-mounted microphones. Li wants to upgrade OLIVIA to enable it to learn
from speakers and to be capable of making taxi reservations and to shake
hands. "What we are investigating now is how we can take context into
account, and how behaviors can develop over time," says A*STAR's Martin
Saerbeck, who is developing a robotic tutor that focuses on teaching children
vocabulary. In a recent study, two groups of children studied with two
different versions of the iCAT robot, one more socially responsive than the
other. The children with the social iCAT robot scored significantly higher
and showed higher intrinsic and task motivation than those children working
with the standard teaching-style iCAT robot. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.research.a-star.edu.sg/feature-and-innovation/6270

Links:
Asoro
http://www.asoro.a-star.edu.sg/

Oliva Receptionist Robot
http://www.asoro.a-star.edu.sg/robots_olivia.html