Dreamer Sociable Robotic Head
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 30 of November , 2010 at 1:18 am
UT Austin’s HCR Lab just got this robot head, and its primary goal is to “elicit a sense of trust and sociability to an otherwise pure mechatronic device.” This is a moderately refreshing (and on the whole, quite advisable) approach to creating a robot… It’s very easy to focus on functionality without worrying about whether or not people are going to actually want to interact with your robot. Obviously, a lot of thought was put into Dreamer, because it’s securely in that sweet spot of humanish without trying too hard.
One of the things that I think makes this robot appear so natural is that fact that it has fast eyes that lead its head around, just like an animal or human. There’s only a minimal amount of that sluggish, mechanical servo response, and the video even mentions that the eyes are capable of moving even faster, up to “human speed.” Plus, as we’ve mentioned before, having eyelids is a really big deal.
Comments (2)
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Digg
Comment by Joey1058
Made Tuesday, 30 of November , 2010 at 1:43 pm
Now that is nice. The eyes were very expressionistic. And although not part of this demo, the glowing ears were impressive as well!
Comment by Goose
Made Tuesday, 30 of November , 2010 at 9:32 pm
I don’t usually like robots that have faces, but this one’s pretty cute
