To build a better robo-butler, make it pay close attention to Downton Abbey.
OK, so that isn’t the exact message of a recently posted talk on TEDEd by Ayanna Howard (pictured above), a professor in Tech’s school of electrical and computer engineering. But the HumAnS Lab founder does say, “the way to make robots smarter is to mimic people.”
“The best way is to observe,” she says. “What are they doing? What are their thoughts? What are their actions? What are their emotions?” Howard says she designs robots with the capacity to mirror human behavior, learn and create. She mentions collaborating with an exercise physiologist who is showing a robot how to work out so that it can be a health coach.
Howard delivered the talk to high school students as part of TEDYouth 2012. Check out the video below, then take a look at the Alumni Magazine‘s “who’s who” of campus robots.
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