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London: In their
quest for creating a human-like robot, scientists have edged
closer to their goal -- they have designed one that can display
several human emotions - from fear, amazement, disgust to
happiness.
Roboticists from the University of Pisa, Italy, drawing on 30
years of research, built one that uses 32 motors in 'her' face to
simulate different expressions, to the point where a robot looks
almost realistic enough to pass for a human.
It has been aptly named FACE.
The university team, led by doctoral student Nicole Lazzeri from
Pisa, modelled the robot on one of the team's wives - and the team
say 'it's very realistic', the Daily Mail reports.
The team used software called Hybrid Engine for Facial Expressions
Synthesis (HEFES), which has been built up over the last 30 years
to mimic human emotional responses.
It tells the motors how to respond in order to recreate a look,
and the software can mix the various emotions on a sliding scale,
for instance a smile tinged with sadness, or a laugh mixed with
unease.
This last expression might be apt for those people who get trapped
in the 'uncanny valley'. The principle of the valley is that
people do not have an issue with humanoid robots when they do not
look human - for instance, when they have metallic faces or
expressionless faces.
And if a robot is undetectable as a robot, then the illusion is
not broken, and people can interact with the robot.
But if the robot looks very close to human, yet is given away by
tell-tale signs, it makes most people startled and very uneasy -
which, if you plot on a graph of human reactions to robots, create
the 'uncanny valley'.
The research team reportedly asked five autistic and 15
non-autistic children to identify a set of expressions performed
by FACE, and then the same expressions performed by a
psychologist.
Both groups could identify happiness, anger and sadness, but they
struggled more with fear, disgust and surprise.
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