Robotic Exposure Affects Human's Ability to Empathise With Them

The level of exposure to robots is likely to affect a person's ability to empathise with synthetic beings, a new study has shown.

The level of exposure to robots is likely to affect a person’s ability to empathise with synthetic beings, a new study has shown.

The researchers believe that brain regions thought to be responsible for our ability to relate to each other might be behind the ability to sympathise.

Biomedical Robots Operated From Different Locations Via the Internet
Experts from the University of Washington and SRI International have jointly developed a new software protocol, to standardize the way biomedical robots are managed over the Internet.

In humans and monkeys, the mirror neuron system (MNS) - a collection of neurons in various parts of the brain, including the premotor cortex and the primary motor cortex - fires both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else perform a similar action.

They have found that MNS plays a key role in creating empathy.

It allows people to transform the actions that they see others performing into internal representations.

Back to The Future: Sex With Robots On the FrontPage Of Cosmo?
Robots of the future would be used for sexual purposes, believes a leading scientist. US robotics scientist Professor Rodney Brooks, former head of the Massachusetts Institute

Many researchers have tried to see if the MNS is activated when humans observe robots.

However the results have been inconclusive, with some experiments suggesting that the MNS reacts to robots and others concluding the opposite.

Robots Now To Assist the Aged
Elderly people with limited mobility may soon come to be served by robots in a manner as if they are being served by other persons, thanks to a collaborative study by three University

"This difference may be due to [differences in] the robot stimuli used in the experiments," New Scientist quoted Sotaro Shimada of Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan as saying.

During the study, researchers decided to test separately the effects on the MNS of the appearance of robots and the way they moved (their kinematics).

Creation of Running Robots Inspired by Cochroaches
Researchers at Oregon State University that cockroaches are a bioinspiration in their quest to build the world's first legged robot

They recruited twelve adults, aged 23. They were asked to watch computer-generated videos of either a humanoid robot or a person reaching out with their right hand to grasp an object.

The hand movements in each case were either smooth (human-like) or jerky and mechanical (robot-like).

The findings showed that MNS was activated when the robot performed actions - but only when the actions were robotic, not when the robot’s motion was smooth and human-like.

In virtual human, exactly the opposite was true - the MNS was activated when the movements were human-like, but not when they were robotic - and the contrast was even greater between these two scenarios.

According to the researchers, MNS seems to respond only when robots move like robots and humans move like humans, not otherwise.

"The human brain detects the inconsistency between the kinematics and the appearance," said Shimada.

He also said that whether the MNS responds to a robot might depend on the level of exposure a human has had to robots.

"I think experience of the observer may be crucial for the activation of mirror neurons," he added.

The study appears in journal Brain and Cognition.

Source-ANI
TRI