Group items tagged

that ritual is about to be replaced with a more high-tech one: people may soon be able to pay for their postage via text message, thereby eliminating the need for a stamp. The system works like this: Swedes will be able to send a text message to the postal service saying that they want postage for a letter. The postal service will then presumably charge an account on file, then respond with another text that contains a code. The letter-sender will then write the code on the envelope to show that postage had been paid.

"It's important to build robots that meet people's social expectations because we think that will make it easier for people to understand how to approach them and how to interact with them," said Andrea Thomaz, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech's College of Computing. Thomaz, along with Ph.D. student Michael Gielniak, conducted a study in which they asked how easily people can recognize what a robot is doing by watching its movements.