The key to smarter robot collaborators may be more simplicity

Think of all the subconscious processes you perform while you're driving. As you take in information about the surrounding vehicles, you're anticipating how they might move and thinking on the fly about how you'd respond to those maneuvers. You may even be thinking about how you might influence the other drivers based on what they think you might do. If robots are to integrate seamlessly into our world, they'll have to do the same. Now researchers from Stanford University and Virginia Tech have proposed a new technique to help robots perform this kind of behavioral modeling, which they will present at the annual international Conference on Robot Learning next week.