democratic forces launched a raid on 18 kilometers northwest of the city of beni every several protests in many in recent weeks locals accuse un peacekeepers of failing to protect them judges in sudan of sentence 29 members of the security forces to death for torturing and murdering a protester schoolteacher and her was killed in february during protests which eventually deposed president omar al bashir. tens of thousands of people are being urged to fi fars across southeast australia 8 emergency warnings are in place in the state of victoria with far fuelled by extreme weather conditions tearing through the area homes are expected to be lost as the fires raged through the east gippsland region. there's a top stories coming up techno looks at the latest humanoid robots i think. from sunrise to sunset cross asia. the pacific

explorer on top fascinating stories one on one. 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 technically 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 wilds where robots and humans co-exist creating a technology that would allow machines to think and act like a human is

a formidable task but in japan they have begun steve assaults of cutting edge research that can give people the power to imitate and even replicate human behavior technique as dr chris would deal with those inside the hiroshi trees japan to find out how it all works my tech my tech 123 testing testing me erica short for erato intelligent conversational android her name comes from the erato is she good or symbiotic human robot interactions project i'm being developed by researches from the soka 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 do you think so i'm the lead architect of the

eric a project i kind of created her mind and wrote all the software that kind of constitutes you know her brain or controls her behaviors dylan glass is a guest associate professor at osaka university he spent 3 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 cooperation or studying you know remote presence and things like that but really the focus with erica is to have her be fully autonomous being able to talk to anybody in that sense i think she's one of the more advanced robots in the world hi there 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 in countering 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't 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 recognize 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 3 travel packages available right now the 1st one is for a tour across the sahara desert the 2nd one is for a trip to london and the 3rd one is for a boat to the river and talked to could you tell me more about the boat tour that includes 10 nights on the boat meals and a round trip plane ticket to argentina how much does that $1.00 cost that is $3000.00 so how did you teach her to be a travel agent so we had participants come in and roleplay 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 if 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 5 nights at a hotel with tours of some famous historical sites and a round trip plane ticket winded about $200.00 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 desert meals and a 2 way plane ticket ok i think i'll have to think it over and all come back when i've made a decision thank you goodbye. goodbye ok's i think that was the 1st 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 1st time you interacted with

erica what was that like the 1st time i interacted with her. it's kind of weird i think most people's 1st 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 she gyuto he created erica after extensive work on his clone robot gemini 2 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 you're human and 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 menu 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 like a 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 go to the in my presence in the uk actually existing here right so this guy can have about a week maybe you know maybe that a bit weaker but this do you know this guy has a feeling. so question the what is a feeling of presence how we can produce that kind of work and the feeling in the traditional neuroscience and calming you can do is highest they cannot explain what is that and they cannot explain the consciousness or not actually we can be pretty cute the consciousness as. a kind of a conscious robot it is you replicated a conscious no no no you know you're by through the interaction we can through the air consciousness way example any cause you can hear the human right presence there

that 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 you know i speak so i look at the. android if i speak something or 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 1070 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 we'll see how i go thank you good luck and. 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 program has come 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 1st 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 no lovely well 1st 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 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 the robot 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 herself can you 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 erica run at the same time i like to think of it as one ok but it's many erika 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's. using the high camera but that sort of cover the wide area in the sense that yes we use an environmental sense on the loss of the sense of where are you and i and these means yeah i. mean this is

you. ok and unsung you know so this you. so what about hearing how does she hear the same other time but also the see how the michael hall. or. 60 michael wants. to micro for years erica and these are the pause and then we. do you mean that. room where the song do you like my flower pots each one is a 16 channel microphone no ray they help me to estimate the direction of sound pretty space so if there aren't more than one just stopped in your front of me i would know who was talking to me oh hi there. can you tell me how much this camera costs. it's only $68.00

just down the hall in 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 2010 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 3 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 he gives information the challenge must perform much like a human shopkeeper anticipating michele 1st 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 and of the shoppers movements proactive but not too aggressive. tb lou is the brains behind these shopkeeping program how we as we are. very very proactive by their nature and we train them on. using the same data. we use a neuron no word to figure out ok i wish shopkeeper. should behave like how much does this $1.00 cost $60.00. and i get on board with. they spare how francs for your part of the good i well so even though the training sets for 2 extreme shopkeeper behaviors were obvious able to make

a choice in between those 2 this. time of the idea is pretty old probably about 15 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 a slick white flashy you know modern robot but really the thing that makes really really unique is that was one of the 1st communication robots so besides looks what are some differences between. of course can't move her the 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 $1700000.00 robots will be in service worldwide by 2020 the leading

robotic countries china south korea japan and the us. 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 27 team the number of japanese fell by a record 300002125 point 6000000 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 another strong reason is that we're going to have. seen that we need to have more. robots is that one reason why the elderly is a target population for robots the 2 reasons they're quite on this and they're you know they're good for accepting the overall balance so they're feeling the some sort of pressures from the you know my people and the and they prefer to speak with that all was well it's difficult for me to imagine using robots in a caring and nurturing sort of situation can you tell me a little bit about how you imagine that would happen if you look at the 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 a robot that you going where you don't understand you don't believe the air force to be double rob you know stone going to. be able 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 more homogeneous and more trusting culture they're also early adopters of many types of technologies. erica was created in 2014 since then a total of 4 models have been engineered in summer 2017 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 the 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 not only. 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 a 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 2 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. so what happens if you reproduce it wrong her people respond in 1966 shaky was introduced at stanford university it was the 1st artificial intelligence robot ever created in searing decades have seen tremendous growth a new model has been shaky 1st maneuvered around the room the next 50 years should see even greater change i'm dr. see you next time on techno.

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