Could this be the future of robotics ? Image Credit: YouTube / Engineered Arts
This super-realistic robotic head is capable of exhibiting a wide range of human emotions.
The latest creation of British robotics company Engineered Arts, this unnerving facsimile of a human male achieves what is often referred to as 'uncanny valley' given that it looks eerily close to being a real human but it is possible to tell that something isn't quite right about it.
Named Adrian and described as a 'mesmer robot head', this fascinating contraption is shown 'waking up' in a new video before pulling a range of facial expressions.
Its realism is helped along by incredibly life-like skin which even features stubble and eyebrows.
According to the video's caption, the robot has 22 custom servo actuators of which only 5 are in the mouth, hence why this particular test model is not capable of effective lip syncing.
"Each Mesmer robot is designed and built from 3D in-house scans of real people, allowing us to imitate human bone structure, skin texture and expressions convincingly," the company wrote.
While it's currently unclear how this technology is likely to be used in the real world, Adrian offers a tantalizing glimpse at a future in which we might live and work alongside highly realistic robots.
Let us hope, however, that such a future doesn't turn into an episode of Black Mirror.
The "creepiness" of realistic heads has been a problem for video game designers. They have found that if they make their characters look too realistic, they can look like corpses. So they have to strike a balance between realistic facial expressions and a slight cartoon appearance overall.
One day in a few centuries these things will be passing you on the street. It’s just a matter of time and they will be recycling our garbage and 3D printing each other. Everything that humanity once was will be embedded into the synthetic minds of these creatures. One day artificial intelligence will become self aware and have the same rights that humans have. Uploading our consciousness into one is never going to happen. Duplicating a human mind however will happen. It won’t be you it will be the other you. The one that woke up in a synthetic creation and learns to deal with it. And the r... [More]
Please Login or Register to post a comment.