Australian scientists have invented a new breed of robots called Lingodroids, programmed to make, use, and share language. The bots can coin words to describe places they have been, places they want to go, and plans for getting there. “When they need a new word, they invent one,” says Janet Wiles, a cognitive scientist at the University of Queensland who leads an interdisciplinary team on the project.

The rolling chatterboxes “see” using 360-degree cameras, laser range finders, and sonar. A microphone functions as their ears, and a speaker acts as a voice box, emitting the familiar beeps of a touch-tone phone. As for brains, Wiles outfitted each Lingodroid with an alphabet of beeps that correspond to letters. Then she programmed them to play a series of games in which they paired the letters into nonsensical combinations like “ja” or “ku” and joined those syllables to coin neologisms as needed. For example, in one game two robots roamed through a course and met in an unfamiliar part of it. The meeting triggered one robot to name the spot “jaya” and share the new word with its partner, who then added the word to its lexicon. In this way the robots slowly built a new language to describe their travels [pdf] and eventually even learned to communicate and understand directions.

Read more about our cursed future at the link below

http://www.bloggingthesingularity.com/2011/09/13/robots-invent-their-own-language/

Meh. Technology will never kill us, and this is proof.

A robotics study in its infancy is proof?

Sincerely, humans will always be smarter than the machines we create. They are manifestations of our wild imagination. The day I die will be the day technology kills me.

We'll always be more complex, but not smarter. Neanderthal man didn't develop their own language in this short of a span.

Captcha software makes me stumble. Signing up for a Ubisoft site makes me stumble. Know what I mean? lol

True AI is what wil be frightening. This is pretty neat though.

So this scientist says this series of beeps represent words. Who am I to argue against her? Science doesn't prove anything.

Pretty sure there's still some tribes that use clicks in their language.

0:56 in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c246fZ-7z1w

"Then she programmed them to play a series of games in which they paired the letters into nonsensical combinations like “ja” or “ku” and joined those syllables to coin neologisms as needed. For example, in one game two robots roamed through a course and met in an unfamiliar part of it. The meeting triggered one robot to name the spot “jaya” and share the new word with its partner, who then added the word to its lexicon. In this way the robots slowly built a new language to describe their travels and eventually even learned to communicate and understand directions."

Science doesn't prove anything.

Ummm, isn't the point of science? To prove things?

sci·ence [sahy-uhns]

noun

1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws

2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation

3. any of the branches of natural or physical science

4. systematized knowledge in general

5. knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study

Science proves nothing except the probability of non-random occurrences. Keyword: probability.

I read the artcile, PK. All I am saying is she says they're beeps mean words, and since she is the creator how are we to argue? She could just be saying that.

Each beep corresponds to a letter.

I know I read it. Doesn't mean I have to believe it lol

not too long ago i read an article about modern pc's (at the time) having as much power as a mouse brain. i forget the timeframe for them to reach the same power as a human brain, then surpass it, but it wasn't long.

i also read an article where they assigend robots to play a game, to label something a resource and then gather it. the bots could share info. when the "resource" became limited, the bots would lie to each other. rather than communicate a resource's true location, they would send the other bots false cooridinates so they could hog the resource themselves.

yeah, these are baby steps, yeah humans programmed the bots to do these things....but picture if you will (and i know it's from the matrix) robots designed by robots. none of the human errors or bloated, needless whatnots humans put into everything. all the callous logic of a machine, designed by machines, and smarter than a human.

http://itee.uq.edu.au/~ruth/schulz-etal-ICRA2011.pdf

http://discovermagazine.com/2011/sep/16-robots-invent-their-own-language