“Robots aren’t generally meant to get confused, but modeling confusion might help make them more useful workmates. As part of an effort to explore ways for humans and robots to work together more naturally and effectively, a team of researchers at Brown University has developed a robot that measures its own confusion and then asks for help if it feels it needs it. The work is important because it’s so easy for confusion to arise in everyday interactions. So making relations with a robot as natural as possible means figuring out ways of coping with this. The robot takes a command and measures with what certainty it can respond. And when it isn’t sure what’s being asked of it, it requests help. Previous work by the Brown University team allowed a robot to read both speech and hand gesture cues to infer what’s being asked of it. The researchers have shown that this is more effective than voice commands alone. If, however, a human asks for a wrench but there are two wrenches near each other, the robot will now decide if the situation is too uncertain and ask for further information, pointing to one and saying, “This one?” This is the latest step toward mimicking the way two people hold a conversation, says Stefanie Tellex, an assistant professor at Brown University and the lead researcher on the project.”