Meet the Growbots
Social robots take baby steps toward humanlike smarts
By Bruce Bower
Boldly going where most computer scientists fear to tread, Rajesh Rao watches intently as 1-year-olds lock eyes with their mothers in a developmental psychology lab at the University of Washington in Seattle. Time after time, tiny upturned heads tilt in whatever direction the caretakers look. Naturally, Rao thinks of robots.
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Not many cyberspecialists would forgo motherboards for mother love. Rao’s rationale: 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.