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ONR: Human face will help troops trust robot

Sailors and Marines are only going to serve closer with unmanned systems, including miniature tanks, boats and aircraft, but as with any shipmate, the humans will have to be able to trust the machines. So why not give the machines a human face?

That’s the concept behind the Office of Naval Research’s program that looks into human-robotic integration, said program officer Tom McKenna, a line of research that could result in humanoid robots going on patrol with Marine squads, small tanks with human faces, and other anthropomorphic touches added to tomorrow’s weapons.

McKenna spoke to Navy Times on Tuesday in front of a display of his robotics programs at ONR’s annual Science and Technology conference in Washington.

A centerpiece of ONR’s support for this type of robot integration is Nexi, an experimental humanoid robot built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. The robot has a humanlike head and upper body, along with articulated arms and hands that can point and pick up objects. It was designed to communicate as much with nonverbal cues — such as with raised eyebrows or a quizzical cock of the head — as by speaking.

Future generations of robots like Nexi could accompany troops into battle, McKenna said, most likely as medics that could retrieve the wounded without putting human Marines or sailors at risk.

Even today’s more basic unmanned systems could begin to include those features. McKenna described how Marines would probably work better with a small unmanned ground vehicle that had a display with a “face,” and could take vocal commands and respond with its own voice. Interacting with the robot this way would free up an operator from hunching over a set of controls while another Marine held a shade overhead to protect displays from glare. Troops will use unmanned vehicles more effectively if they can control them while they’re up and are aware of what’s around them, instead of focusing on the controls, McKenna said.

He also described how troops could use the unmanned vehicle to scout ahead if, for example, a squad commander saw people he suspected were planning a roadside bomb. A robot with a face could interact as easily with potential insurgents as its squad members, and it could roll forward to interrogate them without putting any of the squad members in danger.

ONR’s focus now is to include this type of integration only on relatively small unmanned vehicles, McKenna said, although he added it might be possible in the near future for sailors aboard ships to get a humanoid interface for their computer systems.

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