Robot gestures are going to the dogs

Robot scientists at Aachen University in Germany working have discovered a better approach than making robots act like humans. They make them act like puppies. In a recent paper, the researchers programmed a robot arm to communicate five states to the human user, including 1) greetings; 2) prompting the user to take part; 3) waiting for a command; 4) an "error condition"; 5) shutting down. They did this by copying the body language of dog puppies. As a result, they found, people both recognized the gestures and also preferred them over more abstract gestures. Let’s hope they don’t teach the robots to pee on the carpet.