Robots that recognize when it gains the attention of a human

The folks over at Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with a robot, named Simon, that can detect whether a human being is paying attention to it or not. The whole idea of the experiment was to mimic how humans interact with one another – because robots are meant to be part of our everyday lives in the future; they want to come up with machines that can behave just like how humans would. When a person is interested in talking to someone, they would turn to face them, lean forward or towards the person who has their attention – subtle cues like these can really affect how lifelike a robot can be. And if a robot can understand how humans behave when they are paying attention, it will lead to improved robots that know how to behave in a social situation. Very interesting to know, especially when we’ve been taking for granted how humans behave (since we interact with them on a daily basis). When a robot can understand how we act in different situations, it’s going to lead to more humanlike robots in the future. Hit the break to watch a video of the Georgia Institute robot in action: