Robots in films are known to have skills that can put humankind in danger; however, in real life, their skills are pretty limited. MIT’s CSAIL computer science researchers are trying to give robots some social skills, enabling them to interact with other robots to achieve their goals, as per a new paper.
The research could lead to improved human-robot interactions in assisted living facilities. It can also help psychologists to measure social interactions between humans in a much better way. To study these interactions, the researchers created a simulated 2D environment that enabled virtual robots to perform physical as well social goals.
Research involved three kinds of robots
A physical goal could involve navigating a tree at a certain point on a grid, while a social goal is guessing what another robot is trying to do and acting accordingly, “like helping another robot water the tree,” according to CSAIL.
The robot is rewarded for actions that help it achieve its goals. The team built three kinds of robots – the first is given on physical goals, the second one has both physical and social goals, but assumes all robots have only physical goals. The third one assumes all other robots have both goals, so it can take more advanced actions like helping them out achieve their goal.
“Even young infants seem to understand social interactions like helping and hindering, but we don’t yet have machines that can perform this reasoning at anything like human-level flexibility.”
Working with 98 different scenarios
The team created 98 different scenarios with all three types of robots. Twelve humans saw around 200 video clips of the robots interacting and then estimated the physical and social goals. “In most instances, their model agreed with what the humans thought about the social interactions that were occurring in each frame,” the researchers said.
The researchers now plan to create a more complex environment with 3D agents that make room for more types of interactions. The prime goal is not to just teach robots how to interact socially, but “dig deeper into the human aspect of this,” said senior author Andrei Barbu.
