A robot with a sense of humor?
Now hear this: Sam: Why did the robot go back to robot school? Mish: Tell me. Sam: Because his skills were getting a little rusty! Ahem! Just a little robot joke I thought I should share. But the big story is this- Japanese scientists have built a robot with a sense of humour. Not only that, the scientists say it is capable of knowing when its jokes are not funny. The roller-skating EMIEW2 (pronounced like the flightless bird EMU) is able to have a short conversation with a human being, on its own!
An employee of Japanese company Hitachi talks with the company's robot "Emiew 2" (Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existence as Workmate) during a demonstrationAFP PHOTO / Yoshikazu TSUNO How does it work? The red and white robot picks key words from a sentence -- for example, "how many" -- to try to work out what question it is being asked, then confirms the inquiry before firing back an answer. EMIEW2 has been built by a Japanese company Hitachi. The Engineers have made him so intelligent that he can also understand non-verbal responses like when a human nods.
At a demonstration in Tokyo this week, someone asked the robot about how many people were working on the Hitachi factory? To that, he responded: "We have two swans."When people where puzzled with his response, the robot let out that it was just joking. "You got it? I'm kidding. We have about 800 people working here," it revealed. Hitachi's Hisashi Ikeda said while the robot's sense of humour may not be very refined at present, the ability to comprehend reactions was an important step forward.
"The new technology makes it possible for a robot to understand what a human means, even if they only gesture," he said.EMIEW2 -- its name is an acronym for "excellent mobility and interactive existence as workmate" . The purpose of a robot like this would perhaps be for providing some company to humans in the future- perhaps as a kind of house pet, or even as a receptionist, the company said. On the last note- here is another Robot joke for you (We could not resist!): Billy: What did the man say to his dead robot? Bob: What? Billy: “Rust in peace.” On that last note, do you know any robot jokes? Let everyone know about them in the comments below. What do you think about Robots as pets? Can it be a good thing for some people?
