Indian Academic Builds Humanoid Robot with Artificial Intelligence

An Indian academic, Ram Ramamoorthy, has developed a humanoid robot that will play the traditional 'rock-scissor' game using artificial intelligence. It will take on humans and learn the opponent's strategies as it plays.

Dr. Ram Ramamoorthy is from Bangalore and received his degree on Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering from University of Bengaluru. He then completed his PhD from University of Texas, Austin.

He arrived at the University of Edinburgh in 2007, and is now working at the biggest science computer science department in Europe, the School of Informatics.

The two-foot high robots are programmed in such a manner that they respond to gestures made by humans and simultaneously anticipate their actions. They will do this with the help of a Microsoft known as Kinect, which is a motion-sensing device.

Ramamoorthy, who is overseeing the robots' participation in the Science Festival, was quoted in Outlook stating: "These popular little robots are very entertaining to watch and we hope that the Science Festival crowds will enjoy seeing them in action. However, our research has a serious and very useful purpose - we hope to develop machines that are smart enough to work alongside humans, assisting in tasks where people could use a helping hand."

Rock-scissor-paper is a hand game that involves two people, during which the players form one or more shapes with an outstretched hand. The rock beats the scissor and the scissor beats the paper, and the paper beats the rock. If the same shape is produced by both players, it is a tie, reports TOI.

The intelligent robots will play humans in a series of sell-out shows at this year's Edinburg International Science Festival.