Robot Displays a Glimmer of Empathy to a Partner Robot

An actor robot runs on a playpen trying to catch the visible
green food, while an observer machine learns to predictthe actor
robot’s behavior purely through visual observations. Although the
observer can always see the green foods, the actor, from its own
perspective, cannot due to occlusions.

Columbia engineers create a robot that learns to visually
predict how its partner robot will behave, displaying a glimmer of
empathy. This “Robot Theory of Mind” could help robots get
along with other robots—and humans—more intuitively

New York, NY—January 11, 2021—Like a longtime couple who can
predict each other’s every move, a Columbia Engineering robot has
learned to predict its partner robot’s future actions and goals
based on just a few initial video frames.

When two primates are cooped up together for a long time, we
quickly learn to predict the near-term actions of our roommates,
co-workers or family members. Our ability to anticipate the actions
of others makes it easier for us to successfully live and work
together. In contrast, even the most intelligent and advanced
robots have remained notoriously inept at this sort of social
communication. This may be about to change.

The study, conducted at Columbia Engineering’s Creative
Machines Lab led by Mechanical Engineering Professor
Hod Lipson
, is part of a broader effort to endow robots with
the ability to understand and anticipate the goals of other robots,
purely from visual observations.

The researchers first built a robot and placed it in a playpen
roughly 3×2 feet in size. They programmed the robot to seek and
move towards any green circle it could see. But there was a catch:
Sometimes the robot could see a green circle in its camera and move
directly towards it. But other times, the green circle would be
occluded by a tall red carboard box, in which case the robot would
move towards a different green circle, or not at all.

After observing its partner puttering around for two hours, the
observing robot began to anticipate its partner’s goal and path.
The observing robot was eventually able to predict its partner’s
goal and path 98 out of 100 times, across varying
situations—without being told explicitly about the partner’s
visibility handicap.

“Our initial results are very exciting,” says Boyuan Chen, lead author
of the study, which was conducted in collaboration with Carl
Vondrick
, assistant professor of computer science, and
published today by Nature Scientific Reports. “Our findings begin
to demonstrate how robots can see the world from another robot’s
perspective. The ability of the observer to put itself in its
partner’s shoes, so to speak, and understand, without being
guided, whether its partner could or could not see the green circle
from its vantage point, is perhaps a primitive form of
empathy.”


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Predictions from the observer maching: the observer sees the
left side video and predicts the behavior of the actor robt shown
on the right. With more information, the observer can correct its
predicitons about the actor’s final behaviors.

When they designed the experiment, the researchers expected that
the Observer Robot would learn to make predictions about the
Subject Robot’s near-term actions. What the researchers didn’t
expect, however, was how accurately the Observer Robot could
foresee its colleague’s future “moves” with only a few
seconds of video as a cue.

The researchers acknowledge that the behaviors exhibited by the
robot in this study are far simpler than the behaviors and goals of
humans. They believe, however, that this may be the beginning of
endowing robots with what cognitive scientists call “Theory of
Mind” (ToM). At about age three, children begin to understand
that others may have different goals, needs and perspectives than
they do. This can lead to playful activities such as hide and seek,
as well as more sophisticated manipulations like lying. More
broadly, ToM is recognized as a key distinguishing hallmark of
human and primate cognition, and a factor that is essential for
complex and adaptive social interactions such as cooperation,
competition, empathy, and deception.

In addition, humans are still better than robots at describing
their predictions using verbal language. The researchers had the
observing robot make its predictions in the form of images, rather
than words, in order to avoid becoming entangled in the thorny
challenges of human language. Yet, Lipson speculates, the ability
of a robot to predict the future actions visually is not unique:
“We humans also think visually sometimes. We frequently imagine
the future in our mind’s eyes, not in words.”

Lipson acknowledges that there are many ethical questions. The
technology will make robots more resilient and useful, but when
robots can anticipate how humans think, they may also learn to
manipulate those thoughts.

“We recognize that robots aren’t going to remain passive
instruction-following machines for long,” Lipson says. “Like
other forms of advanced AI, we hope that policymakers can help keep
this kind of technology in check, so that we can all
benefit.”

Short high-level video description of the Columbia Engineering
“Robot Theory of Mind” project (audio narrations included).

Originally published by
Holly Evarts | January 11, 2021

Columbia University | Engineering

RESEARCH IMAGE AND VIDEO CREDIT: CREATIVE MACHINES LAB/COLUMBIA
ENGINEERING | TEASER PHOTO CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK


original article

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Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top
engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the
nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and
Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances
technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220
faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a
collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm
foundation in engineering. The School’s faculty are at the center
of the University’s cross-disciplinary research, contributing to
the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain
Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia
Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, “Columbia
Engineering for Humanity,” the School aims to translate ideas
into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure,
connected, and creative humanity.