Human life is a sublime blend of unspoken words and emotional sense - intimate emotions force the lips to move but words that mean a lot, yet unspoken, huddle into that deepest core of the heart with only expressions to see.
Wit, and emotions distinguish us as superiors - yet, we are fast approaching an era where our peculiarity will end up in a mortuary. Our mechanical creation, a development as aid, has become a passionate requirement in disguise, that’ll soon require to be ministered unto.
That human wit is already our past swank, and the next targeted by developers is, backing robots with the tact of mimicking human emotions - many robots have already been designed for the trait, and iCAT, a robot meted out of a set of logical rules for emotions, does the similar thing differently.
Yes, computers cannot have emotions, but if these intelligent agents can be bestowed with similar emotions, robots could emulate this humanlike reasoning.
The iCAT
Scientists from Philips, Netherlands have designed this cat robot hardware platform called iCAT, embedding it with cluster of logical rules to grasp 22 odd human emotions like anger, hope, gratification, fear, and joy. With the motive of inducing the emotional sense, robot will benefit in its decision-making, thus creating a natural bond amidst humans and machines. Mehdi Dastani, an artificial-intelligence researcher at Utrecht University and others in the Netherlands, inspired by a psychological model known as the OCC model, aim at developing this robot as one that forms facial expressions using its eyebrows, eyelids, mouth, and head position, while interacting with its human users.
iCAT above parallel to others in contemporary scenario
We have already confronted numerous robots that have impressed all nerds with their dramatic competence, and are different in their own ways - mimicking human abilities - with many in the league of emotion state, however inefficiently capable of getting robots to express emotions and bring them forth to people. Though, iCAT’s feature of influencing decision making with its emotional sense is what puts it on a better footing.
Issues jamming emotional success
Robots have matured as human companions, making life effortless for us in all walks, and over it, an assortment of different emotions truly makes for a very rich insight into human conscience and emotional ideology. This visionary human emotional liability for robots is at the human-interaction level - and if, as iCAT presumes, influencing decision making with emotions should become a certainty - a lot to be done in respect is demanded.
After the emotional aspect, next robots will prolog for is rights that for now nest with humans - but that’s distant - for now, the emotional judgment will surely help robots fell both worlds with more effective human behavior.
[Source: Technology Review]
