A human-like robot is set to serve as a nursing assistant and companion for elderly patients.
The revolutionary robot, named Grace, was a star guest at the 14th Conference on Artificial General Intelligence that took place in California this weekend.
She is based on the same robotics design as Sophia, the Hanson Robotics creation that has made frequent headlines in recent years.
Sophia became a citizen of Saudi Arabia, the first time that a robot has received citizenship anywhere in the world.
She has also made numerous TV appearances worldwide and spoken at hundreds of conferences.
While Grace and Sophia share the same hardware platform, however, the artificial intelligence software that drives them is quite different.
According to Janet Adams, chief operating officer at AI research company SingularityNET, Sophia was designed to carry out multiple tasks and roles, while Grace is more tightly focused on her healthcare role.
This has allowed researchers to incorporate some more sophisticated AI tools and to use the open source OpenCog AI systems in a different way.
Adams told Express.co.uk that using different software architecture allowed Grace to access different kinds of reasoning and ways of perceiving the world.
Robot’s human-like face was designed to trigger responses in people
She added that Grace was designed to seem as ‘human’ as possible, in order to trigger natural responses from people to things such as eye contact, gaze and facial expressions.
Humans are hardwired to respond to another human face, and Grace’s design and programming help to provide a sense of connection with the people she works with.
Adams said that when “the magic worked”, Grace was able to give people not only a feeling of connection but also the sense that they were being listened to and were sharing ideas.
A planned upgrade in Grace’s software systems next year will bring the robot a step closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Where the majority of AI research is concerned with training AIs and algorithms to accomplish specific tasks and roles, AGI aims to develop systems with intelligence and powers of reasoning comparable to that of a human being.
The upgrade will start with Grace’s internal software being transferred to the still in development OpenCog Hyperon system.
SingularityNET and Hanson Robotics will also team up to bring some of Grace’s software to Sophia, meaning that some versions of Sophia could be deployed in a similar role to Grace.
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