Robots brush up communication skills

Japanese researchers said on June 13 that they had developed a new system that would allow robots to learn their own communication skills and conversation patterns.
The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology said the system, which it described as a world first, allows robots to move beyond recognition of only certain nouns to understand even ambiguous phrases.
"Robots would become able to acquire communications abilities that would allow them to appropriately grasp the user's intent and situations by exchanging with the user, as with child development," it said in a statement.
For example, if a robot asks someone if they want a coffee and the person replies "coffee would wake me up", the machine would be able to judge whether the user wishes to stay awake, and thus whether they want the coffee, the institute said.