"'Simplified Brain Lets the iCub Robot Learn Language"

This is a picture of the iCub humanoid robot. It will “be able to understand what is being said to it and even anticipate the end of a sentence."

Today I read an article called “'Simplified' Brain lets the iCub Robot learn language”. It talks about an artificial brain being developed and incorporated in an “iCub humanoid robot.” It explains what this robot can do with this artificial brain in it. Peter Ford Dominey, a “CNRS Director of Research at Inserm Unit 846" invented an artificial brain with his team. This brain comes with awesome qualities. “The artificial brain system enables the robot to learn, and subsequently understand, new sentences containing a new          grammatical structure.”

            Dominey and his team couldn’t make this brain off the top of their heads, they needed research to back them up. According to the article, the speed at which language processing is performed in the human brain is one of the most fascinating aspects of it. An example would be, a person talking to you and you listening to what they are saying and predicting, in your head, what you or they will say next based on the context of what is being discussed. The artificial brain uses an "artificial neuronal network”. This is similar to what the human brain uses. “Thanks to so-called recurrent construction (with connections that create locally recurring loops) this artificial brain system can understand new sentences having a new grammatical structure. It is capable of linking two sentences and can even predict the end of a sentence before it is provided.”

            In the middle of reading this article I thought, why is this invention/development so important? Apparently it is very important. It can provide research into certain diseases. This invention “could contribute possible linguistic malfunctions in Parkinson’s disease”. In the future it could provide robots the possibility to learn a language.

             Currently engineers aren't able to program all of the knowledge a robot would need but, it may be possible for robots to get this knowledge through “a learning process—in the same way as children.” How fun would this be being in class with a robot?

            After reading this article I felt that they should have a robot like this in every school. This article opened my eyes to the potential of how much help an iCub could be in classes where all different types of learning takes place. In a lab perhaps, the robot could be the one who holds potentially harmful materials.

Check this article out!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130219102649.htm#.USOu7D5rvfE.email\