Gestures not only improve communication with humans, but also communication with robots. Scientists found that teaching robots to "talk with their hands" may actually aid the communication between robots and humans.
Robot avatars are used around the world by millions of people. And as they become more sophisticated with artificial intelligence, it's important to aid communication in order to give humans a better interface with these robots.
In this latest study, the researchers decided to see if robots using "iconic" hand gestures would help humans understand them better. An example of this is a gesture that looks like opening a book when talking about reading. The gestures can also convey emotion. For example, in order to convey frustration or anger the robot could use "angry" hand gestures such as quicker and more-violent actions.
To see whether gestures helped people understand robots, the scientists filmed an actor reading out a series of phrases. This actor also performed specific, iconic gestures. Then, the researchers filmed a robot avatar using these same recorded phrases and mimicking the gestures.
Actually teaching the robot was difficult, however, the actor used a Microsoft Kinect sensor to record his hand gestures and movements. This data was then translated to the robot. With that said, the robot didn't have the same hand shape or degree of movement as a human. This meant the researchers were only able to approximate these movements.
After filming this, the researchers showed the two clips to participants. The volunteers then had to say what the robot and the actor were trying to communicate.
So what did they find? The participants could understand the actor and the robot equally well. This is especially important to note moving forward.
The findings could be huge when it comes to transferring gestures to robots. As robots advance, it's important to give humans better ways to understand information that they are trying to convey. By programming robots to also do motions as well as sounds, people can learn to better communicate and understand their information.
With that said, it will be some time before all robots are programmed with these gestures. Currently, the scientists hope to conduct more research in the field to see which gestures work best for communication and whether more gestures convey more or less information.
The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
