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Without human intervention, most robots these days can do absolutely nothing – they rely on us entirely for guidance, whether that’s real time or in the form of being programmed in advance. Naturally, a day will come when machines can learn and teach themselves what to do; something Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology is working on right now.
The latest project from the Institute’s Spoken Language Communication Group is a 155cm, 85kg robot that has achieved a degree of autonomous learning through gestures.
The machine is yet to make its public debut, but reports suggest [Subscription link] it can understand the meaning of a human pointing a finger at something or – this is from Japan, after all – bowing to it.
In return, the robot can repeat the same gestures in the appropriate circumstances – such as pointing a direction out and then moving that way – showing it has learned without formal teaching.
(Crossposted to Tech.co.uk)
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01:24 AM 
Mark Hiratsuka •
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R&D | Robots 
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