Artificial Intelligence is growing by leaps and bounds. At the World Economic Forum a new Socially Aware Robot Assistant (SARA) took everyone by surprise. SARA is able to understand not just the words that are spoken to it, but non verbal clues such as those given by body language as well.

The robotic engineers at the Carnegie Mellon University presented SARA as a scientific research project. It soon became one of the key exhibits at the forum held in Davos. SARA is able to change conversation tactics based on the mood of the human being it is interacting with.

Technically it’s not an actual robot, just a computer screen. It uses a camera to get inputs from the human’s face, eyes, smile, lift of eyebrows and a whole lot of other non verbal behavior cues. It can be made of use commercially for a number of operations which require direct interaction with clients.

SARA could be used in health care for elderly people who may get lonely and require assistance. It could also be used as a learning aid by younger children. The scope of uses for this technology is huge. It will be a few years before the results of this science project are seen in the market, but it will be well worth the wait.