Robotics has come from the first inventions. There are working robotics arms, that are viable for use. But, they’re not that easy to use. The solution? Let’s start teaching robots how to replicate human actions. One science they’re looking into is psychophysics.

Psychophysics delves into the how, when, and why of non-verbal cues. This research can be implemented into the teaching of a robot to recognize and react to such nonverbal cues. This being so, no two people are the same. Consequently, there is a complex variety of non-verbal cues and several meanings behind them. Due to this, there is no generalized model nor dictionary to teach a robot with to program correct responses. To tackle this problem, machine learning can be used to teach robots to match cues with behavior. Basically, we’re teaching robots how to read the mini cues that we read without even thinking about it.

The intention behind implementing psychophysics into robots can also be applied to robots controlled by humans to improve the control, known as shared autonomy. This concept determines how social robots interact with humans. For example, in the case of a robotic arm, the arm could predict the task it’s being set to do and act accordingly. Additionally, having a robot capable of serving food entails reading the intentions of the room to be able to safely get from the kitchen to the table. To take the developments further, the research can be used to also have robots respond with cues of their own. This then makes the robots more realistic and more acceptable to integrate within society.

Coding a robot to recognize subtle cues of a human would greatly advance technology, and psychophysics definitely gives the information needed. This being so, the machine learning behind it would be extremely complex (and expensive!). Thus, I believe the current working code of robots could be further tested and debugged to allow for further advancement within robotics.

Let me know in the comments your thoughts of including psychophysics into robotics, or any other methods you’d think would work even better!