“Simplified” brain lets the iCub robot learn language

“Simplified” brain lets the iCub robot learn language: Thanks to so-called recurrent construction (with connections that create locally recurring loops) this artificial brain system can understand new sentences having a new grammatical structure. It is capable of linking two sentences and can even predict the end of a sentence before it is provided.

To put this advance into a real-life situation, the Inserm researchers incorporated this new brain into the iCub humanoid robot.

Humanoid Robot Learns Language Like a Baby | Wired Science | Wired.com

Humanoid Robot Learns Language Like a Baby | Wired Science | Wired.com: “Learning needs interaction with a human, and robot embodiment evokes appropriate reactions in a human teacher, which disembodied software does not,” said Lyon.

Using DeeChee also allowed the researchers to quantify the transition from babble to recognizable word forms in detail, drawing statistical links between sound frequencies and the robot’s performance that might eventually inform research on human learning.

Meet The Growbots - Science News

Meet The Growbots - Science News: He wants to create a robot that sponges up knowledge baby-style. Job No. 1, Rao suspects, is getting a machine to look where an experimenter looks, just as a baby homes in on an adult’s visual perspective. Evidence suggests that an ability to follow another person’s gaze emerges toward the end of a child’s first year. This subtle skill enables infants to learn what words refer to, what adults are thinking and feeling, and when to imitate what others do.

Robots on TV: AI goes back to baby basics - 20 September 2010 - New Scientist

Robots on TV: AI goes back to baby basics - 20 September 2010 - New Scientist: Sensorimotor theories of cognition argue that body posture and position affect perception. In one experiment, toddlers were presented with an object that was always in the same place – to their left, for example. If their attention was then drawn to that location when the object was absent and a keyword was spoken, the toddlers later associated the keyword with the object, and did so wherever it was presented to them – whether to their right or left.

Anthony Morse at the University of Plymouth, UK, is exploring whether the iCub robotic toddler can learn similar associations. "A lot of AI has been trying to run before it can walk," he says. "So a lot of the work that I'm involved with is going back to the basics – looking at the foundations of what happens in early childhood development."