Having a computer for a brain has its perks, but it has its drawbacks as well. Language is a tough concept for robots, as words can convey the abstract as well as the concrete and robots have trouble knowing the difference (and grasping the abstract). That makes human-machine interaction less than intuitive for humans and confusing to ‘bots. But Australian researchers are hoping to change that by teaching robots to communicate verbally in a language of their own creation, the same way humans did.

Developed at the University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology, these “Lingodroids” are small, wheeled mobile robots that use cameras and laser range finders to navigate an environment. But they also carry microphones and speakers so they can speak to and hear each other. Using their “voices” and “ears,” the two Lingodroids play a series of games that require the robots to navigate spatially by creating a shared language between them. . .