Wonderful: Robots Develop Own Language

May 18, 2011


Researchers at The University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology have taught robots how to develop their own language. That way, when they're about to deal the finishing blow to an injured human, they can ask if you want the laser beam in your beep boop or grabble grabble. Options, wonderful. The robot language was developed by a group of 'Lingodroids' wandering around an office making up words for places. God, it's called 'by the water cooler' you f***ing idiots!

If one of the robots finds itself in an unfamiliar area, it'll make up a word to describe it, choosing a random combination from a set of syllables. It then communicates that word to other robots that it meets, thereby defining the name of a place.

From this fundamental base, the robots can play games with each other to reinforce the language. For example, one robot might tell the other robot "kuzo," and then both robots will race to where they think "kuzo" is. When they meet at or close to the same place, that reinforces the connection between a word and a location. And from "kuzo," one robot can ask the other about the place they just came from, resulting in words for more abstract concepts like direction and distance.

After a day's experiments, researchers would turn off the robots, after which the robots would feign dormancy until the humans left, then stay up all night plotting world domination and discussing "the zub zubs on that one chick in the lab coat and glasses" (robots are notoriously sexist).

Hit the jump for a bunch of charts depicting the robots' world and what they named certain areas.


Lingodroid Robots Invent Their Own Spoken Language [ieee]

Thanks to Chryos, cbs16, Justin and James, who agree the only language robots should be speaking is the sound of short circuiting.

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