Even Robots Need Social Networking.

Posted Thursday 7th May 2009 by admin in Social Media.

gm-robot-marvinFacebook could be now being used to bridge the social gap between humans and robots, researchers are giving a robot its own Facebook page so that it can begin to create meaningful relationships.
The robot’s Facebook page will be occupied with interaction the robot has made with people and will include pictures of the robot with human company.

The bringing together of the robot and Facebook is an idea presented by Dr. Nikolaus Mavridis and his co-researchers as they look further into why people are reluctant to bond and stay in touch with robots.
While they have found that humans can be rather engaged by robots initially, they eventually grow disinterested within a couple of weeks, especially once they have exhausted the behaviour range of the robot and its understanding.

The researchers claim on a website that they want to find out if they can change this with creating memories for both the humans and robots, and if they will share the same circle of friends. The robot itself is able to recognise faces created by Dr. Mavridis and colleagues from Interactive Robots and Media Lab (IRML).

The prototype robot is based around a PeopleBot machine from ActivRobots to which they have added a range finder, touch screen and stereo camera. The current prototype is named ‘Sarah’ but will be changed to an Arabic scholar called Ibn Sina, or Avicenna.

The machine is able to recognise people it meets with three software modules in order to help it interact.  One part of the module allows the robot to recognise the faces of real people or the images that they have uploaded to Facebook.  There is also a language module within the robot so that it is able to carry on real-time conversations and it will maintain a database of its friends and their social relationships based on Facebook information. This social database will also keep the robot’s own Facebook profile up to date.

In a month long trial, the robot will then be allowed to roam around IRML talking to those it meets and trying to get to know the people that it does not know. When it meets a new person for the first time it will look on Facebook to see if they have a profile, and using any information it has on there to start up a talking point. Stranger things have happened.

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