The Robobonobo prototype is already the world's first ape-like robot, but its creators want to make it also the world's first monkey-controlled robot.
Bonobos pygmy chimpanzees are the most "dear" animals to us, as they have more archaic features, close to the time of genetic separation of the ancestors of hominids and modern chimpanzees. For example, only bonobos blood can be transfused to humans, while the blood of a common chimpanzee contains antibodies that will inevitably cause rejection in us. They also differ greatly in behavior.
Photo: Great Ape Trust
In captivity, they don't want to learn sign language; constantly communicate with sounds. They do not suit, like ordinary chimpanzees, primitive "wars". They love to catch monkeys (especially cubs), but, unlike "ordinary" chimpanzees, not to kill and eat, but to play with them and release them.
However, our knowledge of them is still extremely small. We have no idea what their audio signals mean, which clearly constitute a clear set. And this is what they are working with in the Great Ape Trust, a non-profit organization (Iowa, USA). Among other things, scientists led by Ken Schweller, professor of computer science and psychology, have created a robot monkey, more like the head of Professor Dowell than the actual monkey. What is the purpose? It's simple: bonobos need a means of communication with people, and in search of such adaptations, researchers want to get away from only sign language.
Chimpanzee Kanzi shows his skills
Promotional video:
Instead, they offer pygmy chimpanzees the same types of activity that are inherent in modern humans: communicating with a keyboard with visual lexigrams (analogs of hieroglyphs: one visual symbol corresponds to one word), controlling a robot with a joystick, etc.
Using these keyboards, bonobos communicate with people watching them and can even do the same with members of their own kind.
Robobonobois simply the next step in exploring the bonobos' communication capabilities. It will be equipped with remote control via wireless keyboards with lexigrams, as well as an "iPad", on which a lexigram keyboard, familiar to monkeys, will be played by a special application. To attract the interest of animals to the robot, it will be equipped with a water cannon - slightly stronger than a normal children's water pistol. The fact is that, although bonobos, with their matriarchy and matrilineal transfer of social status (in ordinary chimpanzees, it is patrilineal), are not very aggressive, they love games, therefore, to captivate them, you need tools that these monkeys “invent themselves”. According to the authors of the project, the robot will come in handy for bonobos to play the chase games that they adore, as well as to spray the visitors of the center with water.
Ken Schweller talks about his projects (already implemented and only planned):
It looks like a lexigram screen for communication between bonobos and humans.
Great ape trust
Finally, it is planned to create a network of such keyboards with an Internet connection, as well as develop a special application that could in real time "translate" the speech of people into lexigrams of bonobos and, therefore, allow something like a "conversation" between representatives of different species …
