How to develop robots that will be more like humans and less like computers more social than
machine-like and more playful and less programmed. Most robots are not very friendly. They
vacuum the rug mow the lawn dispose of bombs even perform surgery—but they aren't good
conversationalists. It's difficult to make eye contact. If the future promises more human-robot
collaboration in both work and play wouldn't it be better if the robots were less mechanical
and more social? In How to Grow a Robot Mark Lee explores how robots can be more human-like
friendly and engaging. Developments in artificial intelligence—notably Deep Learning—are
widely seen as the foundation on which our robot future will be built. These advances have
already brought us self-driving cars and chess match-winning algorithms. But Lee writes we
need robots that are perceptive animated and responsive—more like humans and less like
computers more social than machine-like and more playful and less programmed. The way to
achieve this he argues is to grow” a robot so that it learns from experience—just as infants
do. After describing what's wrong with artificial intelligence” (one key shortcoming: it's not
embodied) Lee presents a different approach to building human-like robots: developmental
robotics inspired by developmental psychology and its accounts of early infant behavior. He
describes his own experiments with the iCub humanoid robot and its development from newborn
helplessness to ability levels equal to a nine-month-old explaining how the iCub learns from
its own experiences. AI robots are designed to know humans as objects developmental robots
will learn empathy. Developmental robots with an internal model of self ” will be better
interactive partners with humans. That is the kind of future technology we should work toward.
