“In their current situation, all they can talk about is spatial concepts, but the important thing is that these concepts are being formed,are beginning to really understand what the words mean“explains Ruth Schulz, project manager. Schulz describes the robots as” basically a laptop on wheels, “but each is equipped with a sonar, camera, laser, microphones and speakers that allow each other to talk. as they move around and delimit their environment in “where are we” games.
With a little buzz the robots run around a kind of maze-office, dodging obstacles like desks and chairs and beeping when they are within earshot of the other. Communicating through beeps, the robots have an internal dictionary that associates experiences, where they appear to be on the general office map, and the names of places they already know. When robots findan unnamed area generate a random word to designate it. When the robots talk to each other, they tell the other robot the area they have discovered, gradually building a common lexicon. So far, the language of robots includeswords like “pize”, “jaya” and “kuzo”.
Research has shown that each robot can direct the other robot to select a location in the office, using only their shared language. Schulz hopes the project will go one step further, with a next phase in which lrobots interact with objects, for example grabbing them and passing them to each other.
