Electric friends
Are friendly robots the shape of things to come?
Robots today can play piano, dance, make cotton candy and recite shakespeare. but would you let them into your home after watching movies like The Terminator or Matrix in which machines turned against humans after becoming self aware?
Roboticist Dr Angelica Lim says people fear that robots will reach a higher level of intelligence which makes them ask, “Is there a day when robots will take over the world?”
“I’d like to propose an idea that robots can be made to feel empathy. the robots we build in the future should not be built with cold logic,” she says.
she hopes to create a robot maid like Rosie in The Jetsons cartoons by modelling how the human brain creates affective empathy. Affective empathy is
for a video on our TEDxKL interview with roboticist Dr Angelica Lim
the response a person feels when faced with another’s emotions.
“We need to understand how affective empathy is ‘created’ in our brain,” she says. so far science points to three areas of the human brain, namely the mirror neuron activity, insular cortex and the somatosensory system.
“We have just created a robot that modelled these areas of the human brain at Kyoto University,” she said, at tEDxKL.
Multipurpose robots
Also, in Japan there are programmes underway to get robots into the home to care for the aged. Almost 25% of the country’s population is over 65 years old and there is a rising demand for robotics in healthcare.
“Prototype robots are already being used to dispense medication in high-end hospitals in Japan,” she says.
Dr Lim currently works with Paris-based Aldebaran Robotics which has developed a robot called Pepper.
“Pepper is based on next-gen technology and is able to sing, as well as understand your mood by analysing your voice,” she says. the robot is expected to be commercially available in Japan in 2015.
the company has also developed another robot called Nao which goes for RM60,000. she brought her personal Nao robot which she calls NaoQi to show off its pre-programmed ballet moves at tEDxKL.
“In the future we will be programming robots in the same way we customise a PC or handphone. Instead of developing apps for our phones, we would be programming skills for robots,” she says.
“My message to all of you is one of hope. Emotion and empathy are the building blocks of morality. I see a future with ‘moral machines’ and moral humans.”