The human touch, in robots

The human touch, in robots: One of the biggest challenges is to improve robotic ‘attention’, says Li. “In human-to-human interaction, we share a natural concept of communication—we know when the conversation starts and ends, and when we can start talking in a group. We are now trying to facilitate this kind of ability in a robot.” Li’s team is developing new algorithms and cognitive processes that could enable a robot to engage in conversation with both visual and auditory attention, accompanied by natural body language.