Wisconsin Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory is dealing with the latest in interactive robots. They have so far come up with interesting uses for robots of the future. A game playing robot that can keep small children entertained was displayed at a recent open house show to display how much progress has been made in human – robot interaction.

Other robots at the show included one which served sushi to customers from a mock order table and a tele -prescence robot allowed a human to see things where he was not present but a robot was. They shared a gaze with special glasses made for the purpose.  HCI Lab’s telepresence robot consists of an iPad-like device running a video-conferencing program, attached to a motorized base with wheels. It is fondly called Skype on a Stick by its creators.

If robots can be made to act more human, humans will not have to learn new behaviors to interact with them. Think about a smart phone and how much it can do for you, but its all useless till you learn how to operate it. Many people have trouble handling the various apps and barely scratch the surface of the full potential of the phone.

Robots could make humans face a similar problem in the future. This is why most science projects at the HCI lab are working towards making robotic behavior more natural for human beings to understand and interact with.