Manchester team aims for more empathetic robots

The funding aims to support development of robots that could have more meaningful dialogue with humans after developing improved insight into human inner feelings through language.

Funding was awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) to Professor Angelo Cangelosi, co-director of the Manchester Centre for Robotics and AI as part of the ‘eTALK’ project.

The Manchester team will combine expertise in AI and psychology to focus on the fact that smart machines still only understand about a third of the meaning of human language.

To progress their ability to understand humans more fully, robots will act as ‘tutors’ to help children better understand numerical and abstract concepts. This will then help robots engage more meaningfully with older generations of humans, researchers said.

Cangelosi, professor of Machine Learning and Robotics at Manchester University, explained that language is the most natural means of communication among people to talk about and share experiences – and for robots to understand and communicate with us.