Humans rely on lots of fairly abstract social conventions when we communicate, and most of them are things that we don't even think about, like gaze direction and body orientation. Georgia Tech is using their robot, Simon, to not just try to interact with humans in the same ways that humans interact with each other, but also to figure out how to tell when a human is directing one of these abstract social conventions at the robot.
It's a tough thing, because natural interaction with other humans is deceptively subtle, meaning that Simon needs to be able to pick up on abstract cues in order to minimize that feeling of needing to talk to a robot like it's a robot, i.e. slowly and loudly and obviously. Gesture recognition is only the first part of this, and the researchers are hoping to eventually integrate lots of other perceptual cues and tools into the mix.
This expands on previous Georgia Tech research that we've written about; the robot in the vid is Cody, our favorite sponge-bath robot. While personally, I take every opportunity to be touched by robots whenever and wherever they feel like, other people may not necessarily be so receptive. As robots spend more time in close proximity to humans helping out with tasks that involve touch, it's important that we don't start to get creeped out or scared.
[Source]
