If you’ve always feared that robots would one day start talking to each other and plotting the demise of the human race, you can start getting a bit scared right now. The folks over at the University of Queensland have come up with a way to get robots to communicate with each other. Instead of giving them a fixed language i.e. something we already know like English, researchers have given the robots the ability to come up with their own words to describe the situation it is in. The robots generate “words” from images of what they see with their onboard cameras.
Called Lingodroids, these robots are designed to work together in a team to map out the area they are in. Whenever a robot encounters a new area, they store its location and give it a name using a word generated from its own language. The location and name is then shared with other Lingodroids in the area. The robots then add those discovered areas onto their own maps and are able to identify it by name. The robots can even travel to that particular location if given the instructions to from other robots. While it’s only the ability to name locations right now, I can imagine it won’t be too long before robots develop the language and come up with words for more functions or actions.