Bridging the gap between simple automation(自动化) and robots that can communicate with humans naturally is a big challenge, but major progress has been made in the past few years.
Research into social robots has shown that machines that respond to emotion(情感) can help the elderly and children, and could lead to robots becoming more widely socially acceptable.
Milo is both a robotic teacher and a student. Developers RoboKind created Milo to help children with autism(自闭症) learn more about emotional expression and empathy(共鸣) while collecting data on their progress to target learning and treatment. Milo's friendly face makes himself kind and the children are able to read his expressions.
Robots can also reduce stress in hospital settings. Expper Tech's Robin was designed as a robot to provide emotional support for children with medical treatment. Robin explains medical details to them, plays games and tells stories, and during treatment draws their attention away to reduce their feeling of pain.
Expper's robot uses Artificial Intelligence(AI) to create empathy, remembering expressions and conversations to build conversation for follow-up sessions. In trials at the Wigmore Medical Pediatric Clinic in Yerevan. Armenia, the team found that Robin led to a 34% weakening in stress and improve happiness of 26% in the 120 children who interacted(互动) with him at least once.
Today's simple systems are being trained to meet that demand. This includes ProxEmo, a little wheeled robot that can guess how you are feeling from the way you walk, and ENRICHME who helps older people to stay physically and mentally active. The problem is the fear that human jobs may be lost as robots become better at dealing with social situations.
