Science & Technology

Can you tell humans and robots apart ?

By T.K. Randall
November 4, 2015 ·  10 comments

Robots are becoming increasingly human-like. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 BradBeattie While most robots look absolutely nothing like actual people, there has been a growing trend in recent years to develop machines that look, sound and behave almost like the real thing.

Chief among these is the Actroid - a robot that looks so convincingly like a human that it could almost pass as one. Developed at Osaka University in Japan, this eerily realistic contraption is capable of talking and moving in a way that can fool even the most eagle-eyed of observers.

In an attempt to put this to the ultimate test, Mexican researcher David Silvera-Tawil and Michael Garbutt of the University of New South Wales carried out an experiment in which a human and a robot, both wearing the same clothes, were presented to a selection of volunteers.Each was given just five seconds after entering the room to determine which was the real human being. The results showed that the robotic doppelgangers managed to induce feelings of stress, anxiety and nervousness in the participants with some being unable to tell them apart at all.

The researchers are now aiming to find a way to help reduce the anxiety levels experienced by people interacting with the robots so that they can work together for longer periods of time.

Whether we can ever truly get used to living alongside such machines however remains to be seen.


Source: Phys.org | Comments (10)

Tags: Robot, Human