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Study Shows That If a Robot Acts Like a Human, A Baby Will Think It's Human

by Amar Toor on October 20, 2010 at 07:15 AM

morphy robot with researchers
A metal robot may not look like a human being, but as long as it acts like one, babies won't be able to tell the difference. That's the conclusion that researchers at University of Washington reached, after studying the ways 18 -month-year-old babies interact with humanoid bots. To observe the baby-bot dynamic, scientists placed each child in a room with a remote-controlled robot along with Rechele Brooks, one of the researchers involved in the study. Brooks and the 'bot would then play out a 90-second skit, during which the researcher would ask the bot questions like "Where is your tummy?" and "Where is your head?" The robot, which was controlled by someone in a separate room, would then point at various parts of its body, and perform other human-like movements, like waving its arm back and forth.

During the skit, Brooks observed that most children followed the mock dialogue attentively, looking back and forth between her and the 'bot as if they were "at a ping pong match." Once Brooks left the room, each baby was kept alone with the bot (and, for safety precautions, their parents). The robot would then beep and move around to grab the baby's attention, and look at a toy lying nearby. According to Popular Science, 13 out of the 16 babies involved in the experimental group followed the robot's gaze, which suggests that they instinctively treated it like a human being. By the time they reach the age of 18 months, most babies are able to distinguish between mechanical and human movements, and will often follow a human.

The babies in the control group, on the other hand, reacted in an entirely different way to the robot. Researchers took an almost identical procedural approach to this group of children, who, like their counterparts, were placed in a room with Brooks and a robot, and eventually left alone to interact with the 'bot. The difference, however, is that Brooks and the robot never engaged in the 90-second skit for the children in the control group. In this case, only three of the 16 babies followed the robot's gaze once Brooks left the room. This disparity, researchers argue, suggests that a baby's idea of what is and isn't human may depend largely on an object's behavior, rather than its appearance. Or, it could just suggest that babies aren't really that smart.

Tags: baby, behavior, children, experiment, humanoid, robot, robotics, science, socialization, study, top, University of Washington, UniversityOfWashington

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