Androids get closer to mastering human expressions.
Creepy Times Two
The closer humanoid bots get to
imitating human facial expressions, the
creepier it gets. The first example was
mentioned in Bots in Brief last month
— Diego-san from the University of
California, San Diego (www.ucsd
.edu) with assistance from Japan's
Kokoro Co. which built the body; and
Hanson Robotics which fabricated the
head. The toddlerbot will be used to
study sensory-motor and social
development in babies. Diego-san
mimics the expressions of a one year
old child using 27 moving parts in the
head alone. Just search "diego-san
robot" on You Tube, and you can see
him going through emotions ranging
from happy, to sad, to surprised, to
"I think my strained peas are coming
back up."
Perhaps even more disturbing is
the Geminoid-DK android which is
pretty much an exact copy of its
"master" — Prof. Henrik Scharfe of
Denmark's Aalborg University
( www.en.aau.dk). As with Diego-san,
the torso is a product of Kokoro. The
unit — having no intelligence of its
own — is teleoperated.
For example, if the operator
opens his mouth, so does DK. Speech
is transmitted to a speaker mounted
behind him. Amazingly realistic
movement is provided by pneumatic
actuators, but is limited to the head
and upper torso which could be why
the professor's wife has stated that
she still prefers the original to the
copy. Of course, a You Tube search on
"geminoid-dk" will turn up a video.
SV
10 SERVO 04.2013
