The robot has learned to copy human handwriting and drawings.

Writing words on paper seems prettysimple human skill, but in fact it is extremely difficult. Just think - to learn how to write, you need to understand at what point you need to lower the tip of the pen, how long and in which direction to drive the line, and where to stop. Despite such a variety of actions, researchers from Brown University managed to teach the writing system of the robot, and now it can quickly write words in different languages ​​on the board, and even copy simple pictures.

The author of the algorithm implemented in the robot isa student named Atsunobu Kotani. It was his work that allowed the robot to understand exactly which brushstrokes and in what order to do in order to depict certain hieroglyphs of the Japanese language on the board. The created training system consists of two models: “local”, where the algorithm monitors the current position of the pen, and “global”, where it is responsible for moving to the next letter.

Robot and human skills

To test the performance of the algorithm,The researchers conducted a test - they wrote a Japanese word on the board, and allowed the robot to copy it. The algorithm showed itself from the best side and, although it made mistakes in the order of the strokes, the characters written by it turned out to be quite legible.

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After a successful test in Japanese,The researchers tried to trick the algorithm by writing the word “hello” on the board in ten languages, including English, Greek, Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, and Yiddish. To their surprise, the robot copied even them without problems, and in the case of English, he even managed to portray italic handwriting. The only problem is that the algorithm is not able to copy the Arabic language, where the letter goes from right to left.

After that, the researchers gave the robot even moredifficult task - they asked him to copy the handwriting of six-year-old children. When he successfully completed this task, it became clear that he would be able to copy even the drawings. The researchers did not lose - the robot really was able to draw a simple drawing of Mona Lisa.

A new study has blurred the line between anotherhumans and robots. In 2018, robots have already learned how to speak like humans, and even reserve a table in a restaurant - it seems that in the near future they will learn writing.

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