Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

In the future, you might be able to talk to computers and robots the same way you talk to your friends.

Researchers are trying to break down the language barrier between humans and computers, as part of a new program from the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), which is responsible for developing new technologies for the U.S. military.

The program — dubbed Communicating with Computers (CwC) — aims to get computers to express themselves more like humans by enabling them to use spoken language, facial expressions and gestures to communicate.

“Today we view computers as tools to be activated by a few clicks or keywords, in large part because we are separated by a language barrier,"Paul Cohen, DARPA's CwC program manager, said in a statement. “The goal of CwC is to bridge that barrier, and in the process encourage the development of new problem-solving technologies.”

One of the problem-solving technologies that CwC could help further is the computer-based modeling used in cancer research.

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