by Bob Lloyd

Created on: July 14, 2010

Robots have long been  a favourite of science fiction. Whether it's the amiable android Data from Star Trek: Next Generation, or the dysfunctional Hal 9000 from Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey, we are fascinated with the idea of intelligent machines which will perform complex tasks for us.

With the recent advent of autonomous, or sem-autonomous devices, we see the possibility of devices which can operate at a distance with remote human control.  We already entrust very many functions to complex machines, whether it is controlling our car engines or the flying of airliners, the control of power stations or the control of enormous ships, so we are comfortable with the idea of machines growing in capability.

The use of robots as either soldiers or teachers throws up a number of interesting moral and ethical issues, as well as some fundamental technical aspects.  In both applications, we require the machine to work to certain ends, relating to and reacting to its surrounding within a set of programmed responses.

In the case of education, we already have programs which assist in repetitive tasks such as rote learning, vocabulary exercises in language study, and so it seems reasonable to extend this activity into those areas requiring more interaction with the student.

However, the teacher is responsive to very small changes in student actions, their demeanour, their expressions, their physical movements, the sound of the voice, and even hesitation.  The teacher can elicit the meaning of all of these signals to indicate uncertainty, ambiguity, confusion, and can react accordingly expressing ideas in a different way, repeating the information, illustrating the material with different examples, and so on.

Critical to the process of teaching is this recognition of ambiguity and even with the use of speech recognition, the ambiguity inherent in natural language is still a significant technical problem for the interaction with machines.  Faced with uncertainty or ambiguity, the teacher will elicit more information or simply try to perceive more and there is an in-built understanding of when clarity is obtained.  This is still extremely difficult to emulate with computer equipment.

So it is possible that the full range of teaching actions are not within the grasp of computerised robots at least yet, and perhaps they never will be.  But on the other hand, there are some tasks which robots can perform in an impersonal way which may make the

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>