Robot–rat social interaction paradigm: a
rat-like robot plays the role of a rat conspecific to interact with another rat
via multiple interaction patterns.Nature Machine Intelligence (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-024-00939-y
A
team of roboticists at the Beijing Institute of Technology, working with a pair
of colleagues from the Technical University of Munich, has created a new kind
of rat robot—one that was designed to interact in social ways with real rats.
In their paper published in the journal Nature
Machine Intelligence, the group describes how they used artificial intelligence to train their robot rat to behave like a real
rat. Thomas Schmickl, with the University of Graz, Austria, has published a News &
Views piece in the
same journal issue outlining how the team in China used feedback loops combined with AI-based reinforcement training to
give the robot rats social skills that were strong enough to fool the real rats
into interacting with them.
Science fiction books and movies have
long promised humanoid
robots capable of
interacting with humans in ways that make the humans forget that the robots are
not human. Such robots are shown as being able to do the kinds of work humans
prefer to avoid and provide companionship.
In the real world, robots are not near
having this level of ability. But scientists are working on it. In this new
effort, the team in China set out to make a robot that could fool lab rats into
thinking they were interacting with other real rats. And it appears they have
succeeded.
Prior research has shown that behavior between rats can be aggressive or playful—rats will fight with each other if the situation becomes stressful. Happy rats, on the other hand, will roll around on the floor wrestling with each other or nuzzling with their snouts. For a robot to fool a rat, it would have to be able to do both, convincingly.
Credit: Guanglu Jia et al, Modulating emotional
states of rats through a rat-like robot with learned interaction patterns,
Nature Machine Intelligence (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-024-00939-y
To give the robot rat some degree
of rat personality, they gave it an AI deep learning app and then trained it
using video of real rats doing what rats do when interacting. Over time, the
robot rats learned how to behave when around other rats. And more than that,
they kept learning after being exposed to real rats with positive reinforcement when things went according to plan.
The researchers ventured a bit from
the rat model—they gave it a cart-like body with wheels instead of feet and
legs. But the rest of it was very rat-like. Its spine, for example, could be
twisted and turned like a real rat, and it could move its head like one, too.
And its forelimbs could interact physically almost the same way as a real rat.
Testing showed that the robot rat was not only accepted by the real rats, but they would respond as expected —they would cower in fear when it appeared angry, for example, and wrestle and nestle with it just like they would do with their real cage mates during calmer moments. The research team concludes by suggesting the robots could be used as research agents to study social interactions and modulate the emotional states of real lab rats.
by Bob Yirka , Tech Xplore
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