Video Friday: Emotional Humanoid Robot

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 29 of May , 2009 at 4:29 am

It takes a demonstration like this to make you realize just how critical body language is to conveying emotion. Kobian is a humanoid robot developed by Takanishi Lab at Waseda University (remember them?) to explore how robots might get better at natural human communication. Among its many physical talents (walking, tactile/visual/olfactory sensing, etc.), Kobian is able to bodily express a variety of different emotional states, including happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, anger, and disgust. See if you can guess which one this is:

Kobian isn’t just doing this passively, either… It’s actually been programmed to select appropriate emotional responses based on a “mental state,” which in turn is influenced by internal and external stimuli. So yes, if you try, I’m sure you can get it to make its disgusted face. Eventually, Kobian might end up in nursing, or in some other environment where realistic human interaction is a priority.

[ WE-4RII ] VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

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Category: Androids, Research, Uncanny Valley

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