Many fear intelligent droids could become our overlords, like The Terminator.
And yet a study has shown we would still trust a robot with our lives in an emergency.
In a mock fire, volunteers blindly followed instructions from an ’emergency guide robot,’ even though it had proven to be unreliable and some participants had even been told it had broken down
The study, by engineers at Georgia Tech, is thought to be the first to study human-robot trust in an emergency situation.
‘People seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault,’ said Alan Wagner, a senior research engineer in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).
I Word Understanding
Overlords– a person of great power or authority.
Mock fire – create false idea
II Have your say
Nowadays robots are present in the following fields:
• Industry and service
• Medical sector (i.e. surgical robots)
• Military
• Education
• Entertainment
• Dangerous, dirty and toxic environments
• Exploration (space, ocean exploration)
• Household (i.e. cleaning robots)
• Agriculture
When it comes to the future of robotics two of the most probable robots to be part of it
are:
• Care robots (babysitting, nursing, elderly care) and
• Humanoid robots
