Robots, Um, Easier To Tolerate If They Make, Uh, Smalltalk
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 24 of March , 2008 at 2:11 am
Also at the Human Robot Interaction Conference this year, Japan’s ATR Labs presented the results of a study on how quickly domestic robots respond to verbal commands. The study was designed to test how long it takes for people to get fed up waiting for the robot to do something. Obviously, an instant response is ideal, and the study suggested that any delay longer than about 2 seconds got frustrating. The interesting thing, however, was that if the robot made some kind of ‘filler’ noises (like “well” or “er”), delays of a few seconds went unnoticed. This is how we humans buy ourselves time while we think something through, and if domestic robots need to take a few extra seconds to process a complex verbal command, it looks like the solution is to have them just yammer on for a little while to distract us. If nothing else, it’ll certainly make them seem more human.
VIA [ New Scientist ]
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Category: Artificial Intelligence, Research
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