Pentagon is developing a real C-3PO or researching a robot that can understand all kinds of languages

ByAndres Rueda

Until now, the Department of Defense "Pentagon"Has spent huge amounts of time and budget trying to create a complete translation device, but it has also become clear that we are starting a new unconventional research. It's likeStar WarsCome out onC-3 POIt seems to be a research on "robots that can understand all kinds of languages" like

The above picture is of C-3PO.

Details are as below.Military's Newest Recruit: C-3P0 | Danger Room | Wired.com

Recently, in the Pentagon there is also an agency that develops new research and research for use in the military "National Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)Announced that it will study "a system that can translate a wide range of languages ​​(BOLT)". This BOLT is a military translation gadget or algorithm that keeps active over the long term.

Although the US military tends to fight in non-English-speaking countries often, it is not practical because it takes time to remember esoteric languages ​​like Arabic to large troops. Therefore, DARPA will request a parliament to fund 15 million dollars (about 1.7 billion yen) this year, and act like a "Star Wars' C - 3 PO" and make a system "BOLT" that can handle difficult translations at enemy areas It seems to be said. BOLT is a PDA-like portable interpreting machine "Phrase letterIt is regarded as a much more successful result than.

ByAndres Rueda

BOLT says to use not only languages ​​but also visual and tactile inputs so that they can "make hypotheses in learned languages ​​and act on their reasoning", according to DARPA's announcement, A robot with visual and tactile sensors that can recognize 250 kinds of objects ". Also, it will be able to understand "the result of 100 operations" so that complex commands can be executed.

As types of translation, we plan to conduct two kinds of translations "human versus machine" and "human to human", so that in the case of "human versus machine", we can understand the dialects of English and Arabic spoken by humans That's right. Also, in conversation between humans, it will become possible to translate between English and Arabic with a success rate of 90% like "Bilingual human conversation". And translate Chinese standard language and Arabic dialect etc without distinction such as conversation voice and text message.

Until now, the US military has tried various translation equipment on the battlefield. However, like the phrase letter currently in use, voice response translation has its limit. I can not translate the words I want to put into words, so I am using a method to sound the main words and words of useful local language in the battlefield instead. The blunt voice using this device can not have complex communication, so the Pentagon invests money for soldiers and develops a new sophisticated device like BOLT.

The Pentagon has also requested Congress for "automatic translation machine (RATS) by voice of robot", which is $ 9 million (about 760 million yen) more than the 2010 budget of 21 million dollars (roughly 17.8 Billions of yen) as the budget for this year. This RATS uses speech recognition technology which is a verification technology of wanted burgers and it seems that it can identify languages ​​from conversation mixed with "noise and deteriorated signal".

Apart from whether it looks like C-3PO socks or not, the future in which voice response translation by robot is realized may not be so far.


ByOfficial Star Wars Blog