IELTS Research Reports

An empirical investigation of the process of writing Academic Readingtest items for the International English Language Testing SystemNon-Experienced Group: MaryTextThe rise of the emotional robot■■05 April 2008■■■■From New Scientist Print Edition.Paul MarksDuke is moving noisily across a living room floor wearing the dark blue and white colours of DukeUniversity in Durham, North Carolina. He’s no student but a disc-shaped robotic vacuum cleanercalled the Roomba. Not only have his owners dressed him up, they have also given him a name andgender. Duke is not alone. Such behaviour is common, and takes a multitude of forms according to asurvey of almost 400 Roomba owners, conducted by Ja-Young Sung and Rebecca Grinter. “Dressingup Roomba happens in many ways,” Sung says “and people also often gave their robots a name andgender”. Kathy Morgan, an engineer based in Atlanta, said that her robot wore a sticker saying “OurBaby”, indicating that she viewed it almost as part of the family.Until recently, robots have been designed for what the robotics industry dubs “dull, dirty anddangerous” jobs, like welding cars, defusing bombs or mowing lawns. Even the name robot comesfrom robota, the Czech word for drudgery. But Sung’s observations suggest that we have moved on.“I have not seen a single family who treats Roomba like a machine if they clothe it,” she says. “Withskins or costumes on, people tend to treat Roomba with more respect.” Sung believes that the notionof humans relating to their robots almost as if they were family members or friends is more than justa curiosity. “People want their Roomba to look unique because it has evolved into something that’smuch more than a gadget,” she says.These changing relationships with robots are something which is particularly in the minds ofroboticists at present. Figuring out just how far humans are willing to go in shifting the boundariestowards accepting robots as partners rather than mere machines will help designers decide what tasksand functions are appropriate for robots. Meanwhile, working out whether it’s the robot or the personwho determines the boundary shift might mean designers can deliberately create robots that elicit morefeeling from humans. “Engineers will need to identify the positive robot design factors that yield goodemotions and not bad ones - and try to design robots that promote them,” says Sung.To work out which kinds of robots are more likely to coax social responses from humans, researchersled by Frank Heger at Bielefeld University are scanning the brains of people as they interact withrobots. The team starts by getting humans to “meet” four different “opponents”: a computer programrunning on a laptop, a pair of robotic arms that tap the keys of a laptop, a robot with a human-shapedbody and rubbery human-like head, which also taps at a laptop, and a human. Then the volunteersput on video goggles and enter an MRI machine. While inside the machine, a picture of the opponentthey must play against flashes up inside their goggles. The volunteers then must choose betweencooperating with their opponent or betraying them. As they can’t tell what their opponent will do, itrequires them to predict what their opponent is thinking. The volunteers then indicate their choice frominside the scanner.Heger’s team have carried out the experiment on 32 volunteers, who each played all four opponents.Then they compared the brain scans for each opponent, paying particular attention to the parts of thebrain associated with assessing someone else’s mental state. This ability is considered a vital part ofIELTS Research Reports Volume 11351