2 professors to build a robot that understands emotions

dubai — Two professors from the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) are planning to construct the first ‘emotional’ robot ever produced in the UAE.

As part of the university’s work in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, Dr Massimiliano Cappuccio, associate professor of the UAEU’s Department of Philosophy and director of the interdisciplinary cognitive science laboratory; and Jose Berengueres, assistant professor at the university’s robotics lab, are hoping to build the first robot that can interpret and express human emotion without language.

Dr Cappuccio’s team will take charge of the social science part of the project, while Berengueres will handle the technological aspects of the project.

“The idea is to focus on embodied cognition,” explained Dr Cappuccio. “So we want to focus on bodily forms of interaction between humans and robots. We won’t focus too much on linguistic communication, it is more something that can express a lot of emotions and also interpret your emotions and establish a strong bond with the human user. Imagine something like a pet that uses a lot of touch, gaze and gesture to communicate — no language.”

According to Dr Cappuccio, the goal is to design a robot that “correctly interprets the human gaze, touch and gesture, and produces the same in a meaningful way”.

“Our lab will test the interaction and response from the point of view of the humans. Jose’s lab will develop the robot prototype based on the results of our experiments, and ... our experiments will be designed looking at the responses induced by the robot in human users,” he added.

reporters@khaleejtimes.com