More about Robots- Can They Understand How You Feel?

Could a robot help you out at the doctor's office?
en.wikipedia.org

I'm a huge fan of Robots. As you could probably see from my post about Baymax, I'm all about
bringing robots into my life. But there are mixed feelings (see what I did there?!) about how robots interact with humans.

Many people find the idea of robots having emotions to be ridiculous-- either because they don't think it's possible or because the idea that humans can create something with feelings is a little scary. Something that scientists do think is a good idea, however, is programming robots to be more emotionally aware when they interact with humans.

Craig Smith, a professor of psychology and human behavior at Vanderbilt University, has a specific goal for the robots that he works with: "We don't want to give a robot emotions; we just want them to be sensitive to our emotions" (Johnson).  He and his colleague Nilanjan Sarkar are working to make robots more adaptive to human emotions.

As our world gets more and more dependent on technology, it's important that these new automated workers are user-friendly and don't incite the rage of human users. Ask your parents about any time they've had to listen to an automated phone system. It's not a pleasant experience. If doctors and other professionals want to use robots, they will have to make sure that they work well with humans.

Finding ways to encourage machines to listen and adapt to human emotions is not an easy task. The team at Vanderbilt has run into one particular problem: "The bottom line... was that people express the same emotions in different ways; thus, any 'universal' method for detecting emotions with robots would be doomed" (Source).

As it turns out, humans are complicated. We act out in different ways when we are happy, angry, sad, etc. Anyone who works at a middle school can tell you that!

So how are the scientists overcoming this obstacle? In order to help the robots read human emotions, they are going to use physical reactions. The robots will be able to scan people's faces for signs of stress or anger. A heartbeat monitor will measure if they are stressed based on a person's heart rate. Skin sensors will tell the machines if people are sweating.

Overall- what a cool idea! I'm sure I will have some future posts about how robots like these are helping to improve people's lives!