Suddenly motivated to remember people’s names
[p.18] Takayuki Kanda and his team at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Kyoto recognize the importance of finding common ground between humans and robots in order to establish relationships and to build them over time, just as normal human-human relationships evolve with time, and they have identified various goals in robotics research that will need to be achieved in order to enable robots to exhibit sufficiently humanlike behavior patterns to engender human empathy. One of these goals is for robots to recognize individuals: “It is vital that two parties recognize each other for their relationship to develop…. Although person identification is an essential requirement for a partner robot, current visual and auditory sensing technologies cannot reliably support it. Therefore an unfortunate consequence is that a robot may behave the same with everyone…. Misidentification can ruin a relationship. For example, a person my be hurt or offended if the robot were to call the person by someone else’s name.”
Read more about the robotic evolution from humans’ mechanical slaves to our loving companions in David Levy’s Love + Sex with Robots, (Harper Perennial, $14.95). IN STOCK!
