Robots taught to work alongside humans by giving high fives

A robotic arm is sublime at stacking boxes on a production line, but workplace robots struggle with social niceties. Now researchers are teaching robots the right way to act in social situations in the hope of making it easier for humans and robots to work together. Human social interactions are full of subtle cues that are tricky for robots to interpret, says Song-Chun Zhu at the University of California, Los Angeles. So Zhu and his team set out to teach Baxter – an industrial robot designed to work alongside humans – to respond to social cues in a more natural way. The team trained Baxter on videos of humans shaking hands, waving, helping each other up, passing over a cup and high-fiving.