Robot tests linguistic theory

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

A project to teach a robot to learn English the way a child does, may get a boost from New Zealand's first research consortium in information technology.

The project leader, Professor Albert Yeap, of the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), is using a robot, named Albot by his students, to challenge the theory of linguists such as Noam Chomsky that children are born with an innate "universal grammar".

Albot's computer programme uses the premise that children learn sentence structure starting with the simple idea of "left" and "right", and put words together using simple rules about which kinds of words come to the left or right (before and after) other words.

Malaysia-born Dr Yeap is using Albot to test his linguistics model. He also is teaching the robot to learn to move in the way a child does.

"I have developed a theory that people move around by first capturing a representation of local spaces, then joining them together to form a cognitive [learning] environment," he said.

"We are testing that with the robot to understand how the robot can move about on its own and capture a representation of the environment without being told; without being given a map."

His project is part of a package of research ideas being proposed by a new consortium combining AUT, Auckland and Waikato Universities, a cluster of health software firms and, potentially, others, including Auckland firm Peace Software and a multinational telecommunications company.

The consortium will be one of the bidders for $1 million in matching Government funding on offer to industry-research consortiums in information and communications technology (ICT).

The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (www.frst.govt.nz) is seeking proposals for the money. Its manager of investment operations, Peter Benfell, said the move was in line with the Government's growth and innovation package in February, which picked ICT, biotechnology and creative industries as the country's three best hopes for growth.

Three of the five industry/research consortiums approved in the foundation's last funding round, and two of the five university-based "centres of research excellence" chosen by the Royal Society in March, involve biotechnology.

So far, none has involved ICT, and Tertiary Education Minister Steve Maharey has said the next two or three centres of excellence will be chosen from the other six March finalists - ruling out ICT.

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Waikato University Professor Ian Graham, who would have been director of an ICT centre of excellence proposed by Waikato, Auckland and AUT in the March round, finds it "a bit ironic" that no university ICT proposal made the March shortlist.

Auckland University head of computer science Professor John Hosking said the Waikato-Auckland-AUT bid apparently had too much industry involvement rather than being a pure research "centre of excellence".

"We are hoping to get it right this time." Health software cluster member Ian McCrae, of Orion Systems, has hopes the consortium will solve how to keep records of all the tests and observations for patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and asthma.