The brain works harder against robot ping pong partners

Dealing with humanoid robots in their current iterations often seems like a bit of a strange technique feel vaguely like us, but comes up short in a way that boggles the mind. While this may not be as much of an issue in manufacturing roles, in fields such as aged care, personality even in a robot could go a long way. But it’s more than just how they look, movement is also key. As robots become more and more a part of everyday modern life, both their manufacturers and outside researchers want to find out why people react to them the way they do and how they can improve.

As researchers recently demonstrated, one way to analyze these interactions is to play a few rounds of table tennis. As explained in a new article published in the magazine eNeuro A team from the University of Florida recorded human brain activity during tens of hours of matches between both other humans and robots. They then compared the games to see if the competitors resulted in different neurological readings.

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in the statement, Daniel Ferris, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida and advisor to the project led by UF graduate student Amanda Studnick, said: Robots will become more ubiquitous Human interactions with robots will be different than when they interact with each other. with other people. Our long-term goal is to try to understand how the brain responds to these differences.

To do this, Studnicki and Ferris assembled more than 100 electrode-lined caps attached to a backpack-sized device, then asked human subjects to wear a futuristic hat while playing ping pong. As it turns out, the human brain shows clear signs of working harder when paired against a robotic opponent.

When serving against the nearest, the players’ neurons cooperated to interpret subtle body cues, timing and speed. However, when placed against the ball feeding machine, the neurons were not equally aligned, which is known in neuroscience as desynchronization.

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In many cases, the desynchronization is an indication that the brain is doing a lot of calculations instead of sitting and idling, Ferris explained. in the statement on Monday.

The team theorizes that because the human brain works so differently against a robotic opponent, nothing beats a member of the sport in sports training. However, Studnicki is not so sure that this will always be the case. I still see a lot of value in training on the machine, they said in Monday’s release. But I think the machines will evolve over the next 10 or 20 years and we could see more naturalistic behaviors that players can train against.

These naturalistic behaviors could emerge with continuous robotic improvement alongside similar brain activity monitoring. The closer to synchronization, the more seamless and less strange people’s experiences with robots can become. However, the ball is firmly in the robot manufacturers’ court.