Humanoid Robot Learns to Talk

With the help of human instructors, a robot has learned to talk like a human infant, learning the names of simple shapes and colors.
“Our work focuses on early stages analogous to some characteristics of a human child of about 6 to 14 months, the transition from babbling to first word forms,” wrote computer scientists led by Caroline Lyon of the University of Hertfordshire in a June 13 Public Library of Science One study.
Named DeeChee, the robot is an iCub, a three-foot-tall open source humanoid machine designed to resemble a baby. The similarity isn’t merely aesthetic, but has functional purpose: Many researchers think certain cognitive processes are shaped by the bodies in which they occur. A brain in a vat would think and learn very differently than a brain in a body.

This field of study is called embodied congnition and in DeeChee’s case applies to learning the building blocks of language, a process that in humans is shaped by an exquisite sensitivity to the frequency of sounds.

'Robot embodiment evokes reactions which disembodied software does not.'

The outlines of this might seem self-evident — babies learn by listening — but nuances of the necessary interactions couldn’t be replicated by a human talking to a glowing screen. “Learning needs interaction with a human, and robot embodiment evokes appropriate reactions in a human teacher, which disembodied software does not,” said Lyon.
Using DeeChee also allowed the researchers to quantify the transition from babble to recognizable word forms in detail, drawing statistical links between sound frequencies and the robot’s performance that might eventually inform research on human learning.
To be certain, DeeChee doesn’t yet think like a human baby. It doesn’t have the software. Asked if this process of learning might be combined with higher-level cognitive programs to produce something like consciousness, Lyon demurred.
“First we have to ask, ‘What is consciousness?’” she said.
What is the next step?

 Humanoid Robots are going to be a reality in next 20-30 years, they will not only be able to imitate human behavior but will also be able to think and act on there own like them. Definitely it will take awhile for Humanoid robots to understand that they are slaves to humans and don't have any status or reputation in human society.
Humanoid robots will further add more complexity to human society, making human beings more lazy, incompetent in front of a machine, but before this happens we can have some fun with these mini-robots which are currently available in the market in the form of entertaining toys .