Robots with emotions help humans out of jinx of sadness
Depression is a growing silent killer in people around the globe. Humans, owing to the pace and subjectivity toward life, have been drowning deeper into the burrows of sorrow. Sadness has become an endless virtue, and there aren’t many alternatives to break the shackles. Could robots be the angels humankind requires to crack open the jinx? Perhaps, the statement holds weight – scientists in the UK have assembled to create robots with capabilities to emotionally respond to humans, comforting them when they are in the throes of sadness.
Under the project Feelix Growing, robots have been built that showed signs of imprinted behavior on experimentation, of the sort seen in birds, who associate and attach themselves to the first thing they see at birth. Prototypes of these baby pet robots shall be exhibited at the ICT'08 event organized by the European Commission in Lyon next week.
Dr Lola Canamero, of the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Computer Science, coordinator of this European project, believes that robots can learn more and be more human-like if they are brought up in the same environment, learning to efficiently explore the new environment helped by a human caregiver, to pay back in return.
Sad are only those who understand, machines don’t understand and therefore they don’t get sad. Are we so engrossed in sadness that we need robots to help pull us out of the emotional trauma. Possibly, we are approaching the day when we would need robots to grow up and adapt to our everyday environments, and then help us through the existence - and this is what the team of scientist envisions to build robots for.
Via: DailyMail
