Researchers investigate early language acquisition in robots
(Phys.org)—Research into robotics continues to grow in Europe. And the introduction of humanoid robots has compelled scientists to investigate the acquisition of language. A case in point is a team of researchers in the United Kingdom that studied the development of robots that could acquire linguistic skills. Presented in the journal PLoS ONE, the study focused on early stages analogous to some characteristics of a human child between 6 and 14 months of age, the transition from babbling to first word forms. The results, which shed light on the potential of human-robot interaction systems in studies investigating early language acquisition, are an outcome of the ITALK ('Integration and transfer of action and language knowledge in robots') project, which received EUR 6.3 million under the 'Information and communication technologies' (ICT) Theme of the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).