one hundred troops are surrounded him bagged disproove and that's on the border with turkey when a stand they took refuge after the taliban overran more than a dozen checkpoints on friday afghan forces have been battling the taliban in this particular region for almost two weeks thirty soldiers have been killed and up to forty have been taken hostage french police have fired tear gas at yellow vests protesters in the capital paris it's the eighteenth weekend of demonstrations against president macro protests began over a proposed increase in tax on diesel which is since been scrapped the rallies have grown into a wider anti government movement. today those are the latest headlines techno is next. we understand the differences and the similarities of cultures across the world. so

no matter where you call home al-jazeera will bring in the news and current affairs that matter to you. al-jazeera. my name is erica it's a pleasure to meet you the voice a blink of an eye him unlike responses from a machine named erica techno explores the social robots the newest generation of androids. this is techno a show about innovations that can change life we're going to explore the intersection of hardware and humanity and we're doing it in a unique way this is a show about science by scientists. fascinating glimpse into the future a world where robots and humans co-exist creating the technology that would allow

machines to think and act like a human is a formidable task but in japan they have begun steve results of cutting edge research that can give the power to imitate and even replicate human behavior techno as dr chris would deal with goes inside the hero's. trees japan to find out how it all works my check my check one two three testing testing me erica short for erato intelligent conversational android her name comes from the. symbiotic human robot interactions project i'm being developed by researchers from a.t.r. osaka university and kyoto university. to be capable of human like speech and interaction but to her programmers and visitors she simply erica some people say that my feelings are only programmed that they're not real but if i think they're real then

they are real don't you think so i'm the lead architect of the erika project i kind of created her mind and wrote all the software that kind of constitutes in her brain or in controls or behaviors dylan glass is a guest associate professor at osaka university he spent three years working on erika a lot of my research has been into how do we create the software how do we create the mind of a robot erica was designed to be the world's most advanced most autonomous android and that was really the goal with creating her a lot of other androids have been developed for telling operation or studying you know remote presence and things like that but really the focus with erica is to have her be fully autonomous be able to talk to anybody in that sense i think she's one of the more advanced robots in the world high that how can i help you today but i want to go on vacation welcome to the high tech world of advanced robotics today erika's programmers are running

a demonstration their goal is to find ways to make erica act more human even more than her appearance is suggest i was created to be the world's most advanced and most beautiful fully autonomous sandra lee malcolm during is one of erika's programmers so what type of social interactions can you teach these robots to do what scenarios would i imagine encountering a robot like this in so this type of robot. would be really useful as a receptionist or and it type of situation where she doesn't really have to move around as a robot lots of things are difficult for me things like language understanding perception of emotions common sense reasoning and you know i can do. even move my arms all these things are easy for humans so it's hard being a robot i guess one advantage of being a robot is that i can never die my physical parts can be repaired and replaced and my mind come be restored from backup so in a sense you could say i'm

a mortal also i have a perfect memory i can recognise thousands of faces and i can see in the dark and something that i've trained her to do is act like a travel agent well we have three travel packages available right now the first one is for a tour across the sahara desert the second one is for a trip to london and the third one is for a boat tour of antarctica could you tell me more about the boat tour that includes ten nights on the boat meals and a round trip plane ticket to argentina how much does that one cost that is three thousand dollars so how did you teach her to be a travel agent. so we had participants come in and role play as a customer and travel agent we recorded their data like what they were saying video data and then we use that data to train machine learning algorithms so that erica

could take the role of the person playing the travel agent do you have anything else available well we also have a trip to london can you tell me more about that one trip oh yes i have included five nights out a hotel with tools of some famous historical sites and a round trip plane ticket we did about two hundred training interactions for this demo it's a fairly simplified travel agent scenario but you can imagine if we were able to collect a lot more data than the. interaction could be much more complex the price includes travel with the guy across the sahara does it mean a loss and a two way paying ticket ok i think i'll have to think it over and i'll come back when i've made a decision thank you goodbye goodbye ok i think that was the first real world human robot conversation i've ever seen she had a lot to say about herself yeah tell me about that so she was teaching you

a little bit about how she works tell me about the first time you interacted with erik i was that way the first time i interacted with. it's kind of weird i think most people's first impressions of erica is that she's kind of creepy. really you you get used to her after a while. these robots are the brainchild of professor he wrote. he created erica after extensive work on his clone robot gemini two hiroshi is often called the godfather of the humanoid he's considered one of the top programmers in the world and his robots are among the most advanced where you are studying the a human so by creating a body c'mon like robots are you talking about human robot interactions why is it important for the robots to look human because you know the human brain has a million function to recognize humans so if they we call and say to the best into office for the human is a human that is clear the human brain has

a function to recall when those human voice human face right there for you know the human right the robot can be idea interferes for the humans in trying to create a robot that looks like you and behaves and acts like you you're sort of learning about yourself for example or the feeling of a presence so you know you get to the in my presence i'm actually existing in here right so this guy and i can have about we maybe you know maybe that it we go about this do you know this guy has a feeling for a sense so question the what is a feeling of presence how we can produce the kind of work and on the few things in the traditional neuroscience and calling you can do is high and they cannot explain what is that and they cannot explain the consciousness of the actually we can be pretty cute the consciousness right as a kind of a conscious robot it is you replicated a conscious no no no you know you're by but through the interaction we can through their consciousness way example any cause you can hear the human right presence

there you could you know i guess you could feed a kind of a consciousness from the echoes and i want to put this one and this is in my reponse and if i speak so look at the. android if i speak something how will you know he said how old is and so if i use the head say your android will have my voice yes of course very strong. and speak something hello i am an android in one nine hundred seventy japanese robotics professor massa hito morty devised the concept of the uncanny valley the point when a robot is made to appear so human like that it makes us feel uneasy that i have emotions in the lab it's easy to feel erica's presence but would she cross the uncanny valley i was given an opportunity to find out ok so can i talk there.

sure you can ask her about herself and maybe sure share some of her thoughts on what she thinks about things ok say hi go thank you good luck and hello may i ask your name my name is crystal crystal is that right yes my name is ok it's a pleasure to meet you crystal do you have feelings so you'd like to know if i have feelings yes that's difficult to say if you were to ask me i would say that i believe i do for example i'm happy when i can talk with people and i'm frustrated when i can't understand what people are saying i think it's important to have feelings so i can communicate with people in fact they're designing my control software to be based on desires and intentions that way my programmers can specify

my desires and then i come choose what to do to try to achieve them then my feelings and emotions can be generated based almost to size and intentions i know it sounds a bit technical but i think it's rather brilliant. anyway that bit is still under development at the moment i hope they finish it soon i think when i was first interacting with emma and obviously didn't really know what to expect i had watched someone interact but i you know it was a completely different experience to be sitting in the hot seat well before we finish do you mind if i ask you a few questions you know lovely well first i would like to know did you enjoy talking with me today can a robot feel. that's a philosophical question if a robot acts as if it has a certain emotion or responds in

a predictable way to something we ascribe the sense that it's feeling psychologically it has the effect of seeming like it feels something and that's very important because what we want with social robots is to interact smoothly with us in day to day scenarios right so we if they look like humans we expect them to act like humans and we we have all these constructs in our mind that we ascribe feelings we ascribe intention to the robots so they have to be able to be consistent with what we expect them to do or else they feel weird it's just a strange machine do you think you could ever become friends with an android yes i suppose it is strange to think of being friends with a machine maybe it would not be as deep as a friendship with another human but if for rupert could remember you and have shared experiences we've you then maybe it would seem like a friend there were a couple of things that i noticed one of them was that she really wanted to share information not just about herself but also other like advocating for other robots

like her self need tell me a little bit about that she seemed like she felt she was a spokesperson for humanoid robots i am hopeful for the future i think that robots are almost like the children of humanity. you other ones who creates loss guide us and teach us about the wild and in return i hope we can help you with you take care of you when you're old and sick and help to make society a little bit better for everyone in creating a robot you have to think about how to create her her character right what does she want what is you know what is she interested in and so especially when the robot is taking initiative to talk to choose what to talk about. the rover really needs have some goals in mind or some intentions and so i think one of the characters that they've been developing for her is this idea that she wants to be kind of an ambassador for robots or something and to really help you know communicate to

people about robots and to make them feel more comfortable about it so her intension system will when she has a chance to bring up a new topic will select things in that direction because that's what she's interested in engineers hired an entire team of artists to design erika's human like appearance and characteristics. the computer brain that controls erika's functions presents a different challenge how many different programs as erika run at the same time i like to think of it as one ok but it's many erica has her basic core program we call it which means consciousness in japanese and that manages all of her memory and her perception as well as her motor control and things like matching you know lip movements to her speech and things like that we have another program which allows us to script out complex hierarchical flows of sort of social interaction

behaviors so kind of like flow charts that kind of tell are ok in this situation this is what you need to do then she has others programs that do perception so looking at the skeleton you know the shapes of people in the room figuring out who is where who's looking at or who's talking and fusing that data together. but in the end i think of it as just one program really erika's hardware allows her to hear and see she can track objects around the room she uses a common videogame sensor the x. box connect inside those flower pots or her ears project group leader to cause she explains how it all works so right now erika knows that there are people in these locations right and not because she has eyes or so the sea has i i mean this or that i board there's a camera and also see what she does look at using a high camera but to cover the wide area in the sense and yet so that we use an

environmental sensor on the loss of the scene so where are you and i on these planes yeah i. mean this is you. ok and unsung you know so this you. so what about hearing how does she hear the same of the camera also to see how the michael hall. or. sixty micro points or thought very subtle to microform. erica and these are the points and then we. do you mean that. we're the sound come do you like my flower pots each one is a sixteen channel microphone or a they help me to estimate the direction of some pretty space so if there are more than one just standing in front of me i will know who is talking to me below i there. can you tell me how much this camera costs.

it's only sixty dollars just down the hall and another laboratory set up like a camera shop is another less human looking robot but it is still very high tech according to researchers it's a ton of this meaning the robot is capable of operating on its own. in two thousand and ten it was used to help older people navigate the supermarket supplying a helpful hand as well as useful information. back in the lab programmers have been training the robot as a camera shop keeper we have three cameras in the room on these white pillars and in the experiments that we've run customers have come up and ask questions about the cameras and gives information the challenge must perform much like

a human shopkeeper anticipating questions and supplying correct answers it must be able to move around a designated space in this case the laboratory camera shot freely and in a patient of the shoppers movements proactive but not too aggressive. tb lou is the brains behind these shopkeeping program how we as we are. very. by their nature and we train them on. using the same. word to figure out ok i wish shopkeeper. should behave like how much does this one cost sixty dollars. when i get on board when. they spare how francs for your part of the good i well so even though the training sets were

too extreme shopkeeper behaviors were oblivious able to make a choice in between those two this. time of the idea rover is pretty old probably about fifteen years old and is held together by duct tape with. the looks a little clunky but i think that's part of its charm actually and i think it's more relatable even than you know slick white flashy you know modern robot but really the thing that makes really really unique is that was one of the first communication robots so besides looks what are some differences between nobody in america of course can't move her way that's one thing also her software is much more advanced like we showed you the intention based behaviors he doesn't have anything like that right now. the use of robots in manufacturing is growing according to the international federation of robotics one point seven

million robots will be in service worldwide by two thousand and twenty the leading robotic countries china south korea japan and the u.s. . there is fear in many places around the world that robotics technologies will eventually replace humans but here in japan it's a different story they're developing human like robots to solve some of their populations biggest problems. osaka japan is the society in transition on a busy night the streets are packed with young people that belies the truth japan's population is rapidly declining according to japan's ministry of internal affairs as of january twenty seven team the number of japanese fell by a record three hundred thousand to one hundred twenty five point six million the population decline is projected to continue one solution place workers with robots

. another challenge japan is now considered the world's senior citizen according to the united nations its population is the oldest in the world and the strong reason is that we're going to have. seen that we need to have more by robots is that one reason why the elderly is a target population for robots the two reasons they're quite on this to and they're you know they're good for accepting the roberts so they're feeling the some sort of pressures from the normal people and the and they prefer to speak with their all was well it's difficult for me to imagine using robots in a carrying and nurturing sort of situation can you tell me a little bit about how you imagine that would happen if you look at the and there was smartphones we couldn't imagine that this kind of you know the heavy use of a smartphone this bro body but same things happens where there was there are all about you going where you don't understand you don't believe the force to be double

rob you know i stone gree in a beaver you know what we want to accept or what's more he she good o. believes japanese society is structured to be more accepting of robots than the mideast europe in the us. he says it's because they are a more homogeneous and more trusting culture they are also early adopters of many types of technologies. jericho was created in two thousand and fourteen since then a total of four models have been engineered in summer two thousand and seventeen she was given an upgrade so she could move her arms along with her head neck and shoulders legs may be next but there is no timeline for that milestone i think you guys did a really great job trying to animate erica and human wave like not just that she looks human but the the little. adjustments and it's very human

like sort of facial tics in a way i didn't think that i would have such a strong urge to bond with something that i knew wasn't alive but by the end of the conversation that i was having with her i realize that for the last few minutes i had been mirroring some of those programmed behaviors when she turned her head i would tilt my head the same direction and these are all you know things that are indicative of social bonding or an attempt on my part to bond socially with her so certainly there was some success at least for me. in forming a relationship with something that. it's not a lot of but it's it's there you know and you do socially connect with it you know and on a subconscious level and this is why robots that have a human form really are kind of different from other robots because you don't bond in the same way with it with a vacuum cleaner we are creating this new kind of entity that's not really a person but we can interact with it like a person and so we have to kind of set what are the ground rules are how do we

navigate this so what are we learning what does roe v teach us what is erika teach us well a big part of what we need to learn is how people have expectations of robots and how to set expectations appropriately so if the robot comes off as being you know able to understand anything you say and respond in any way and then it really can't and people are disappointed and that's a bad interaction. so part of it is finding that balance and learning you know ways to sort of set expectations there's a lot of things that are very sort of technical that we don't think about every day that we do without knowing so for example if i want to approach a person or a group of people to talk with them there's certain motion patterns i make certain ways i approach certain ways a use gaze cues and we just do that unconsciously we don't think about it but if you program a robot you do it it's the program every movement so we really have to study ok how do people actually interact and build models to do these things that we've done that i will learning about robots by doing this are we testing whether our

understanding of humans is correct so the answer is both we're learning about how to build robots in certain ways and we're also learning about ourselves and depending on who you are one of those two is more interesting on an engineering level you know how do we make robots that can you know proactively engage with people or that can you know be creative and explore new areas or learn from imitation of people like there's some very hard technical problems here but on the other hand on the human side we learn so much about ourselves because we're studying what people do on a very technical level and we're also trying to reap. produce it so what happens if you reproduce it wrong how do people respond in one thousand nine hundred sixty six seki was introduced at stanford university it was the first artificial intelligence robot ever created in searing decades have seen tremendous growth the new models since shaky first maneuvered around to remedy the next fifty years should see even greater change i'm dr. see you next time on techno.

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