Robots that are able to communicate with each other are in a position to come out of dangerous situations such as fire breakouts by working in teams. The research team at the University of Delaware are working on developing a robot language and incorporating learning abilities in robots.
Linguist Jeff Heinz and mechanical engineer Bert Tanner are teaching robots about cooperative behavior, by observing how children learn to communicate and how adults learn new languages.
Based on the intricate set of rules followed by human languages, the team is trying to create a robot language which is in the form of sentences that combine action words that a robot can follow. Jeffrey Heinz, a linguist at the University, explained that a sentence according to a robot would mean a sequence of actions. Robots are being taught by the researchers to communicate with each other using sentences that club together actions performed by the robot in a specific order.
Establishing a communication path between robots would be helpful for them to learn about their environment and about each other. Another researcher at the University explained that the research work aims at making robots more adaptable to their environment and help them modify themselves to suit the environment based on the knowledge they gain.
Individual robots would have varied abilities and adhere to a different set of rules. So in order to accomplish a task all of them work as a team by exchanging information with each other. While working as a team the robots get to know their abilities, their counterpart’s capabilities and also understand the ultimate goal they need to accomplish.
Source: http://www.udel.edu