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Human-Robot Interaction

Robots still lack the human touch

BOSTON--Robot engineers would do well to play with video games and other well known machine interfaces to get their creations out of the labs and into the marketplace, according to robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks.

Speaking at the Human-Robotics Interaction (HRI) 2012 conference here, Brooks said that academics too often expect the users to adjust to robots and don't foresee how people will use the robots they design.

The former director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brooks was a co-founder of iRobot, which sells the Roomba vacuum cleaner and robots to … Read more

The robot that acts like Keanu Reeves

If you were going to design a robot to look like a real human being, which famous face would be your model?

Would you go for an Angelina Jolie because, well, she's already been Lara Croft and somehow the distance from video game character on your telly to robot in your living room is shorter than the walk to your garage?

Or might you prefer a warm-hearted intellectual such as Kanye West, the Marquis de Sade, or Ann Coulter?

Well, the University of West of England and the University of Bristol, as part of a project called Human-Robot Interaction, … Read more