[As the short story below from Futurism reports, a video of a new robot from the company Engineered Arts named Ameca is going viral because the robot’s facial expressions are unusually realistic. Coverage in Nerdist begins this way:
“The population of humanoid robots on Earth continues to grow unabated. Everybody and their IT person has seen Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot, for example. And what’s going on with bipedal bots at Caltech would make a T-1000 sit up and take notice. But nothing—as far as we know—appears to be more realistic than Engineered Arts’ new robot, Ameca.”
LAD Bible includes these responses from people who watched the video:
“People on YouTube were both shocked amazed at how realistic and human-like the machine is.
One user wrote: ‘I know we’re supposed to be scared of AI, but this is the first gynoid that hasn’t creeped me out. It’s pretty cool.’
Another said: ‘It’s the eyes. People take for granted how important eyes are when it comes to something looking alive. The rapid movement, the focus, the blinking, the attention they seem to pay to whatever is grabbing their attention.’
A third added: ‘I seriously thought this was CGI at first. Great work! The hands look really well done too.’
Some people compared Ameca to the NS-5 series from I, Robot with Will Smith. To be fair, apart from the robots in that movie having a glass-like face, they’re pretty indistinguishable.”
Marques Brownlee wrote this on Twitter:
“Guys calm down, stop freaking out, it’s just a bunch of actuators and motors with rubber stretched over them to simulate facial movement. It’s all preprogrammed. It’s just for research.
Internally: nope nope nope nope nope.”
Watch the viral video and a second one for yourself on the company’s website (or via Vimeo here and here) and see if you experience medium-as-social-actor presence. –Matthew]
New Video Shows Robot With Terrifyingly Realistic Facial Expressions
Fortunately, It Has Yet To Learn How To Walk.
By Victor Tangermann
December 2, 2021
The Awakening
A UK-based robotics company called Engineered Arts has shown off an impressive new humanoid robot that can put on some eerily realistic facial expressions.
A teaser video shows the grey-faced robot wake up, distort its face into a grimace of shock, and then examines its hands in disbelief.
The robot ends its charade with a knowing “I got you” grin — as if it was trying to fool us into thinking it was actually gaining self-awareness.
It’s a clever illusion — the sequence was more than likely sequenced ahead of time — but a seemingly stunning example of how far robotics have come nonetheless.
Human-Robot Interaction
Engineered Arts sees the platform, called Ameca, as a “platform for development into future robotics technologies,” according to its website.
The robot is meant to allow us to study human-robot interaction — and believable facial cues make that a whole lot easier.
The company is making the robot available for purchase and event rental, but has yet to advertise a price.
And a key caveat: while Ameca is impressive at conveying emotions via facial expressions, it’s unable to walk yet.
“However, Ameca is a modular robot, we plan on upgrading [its] abilities over time so one day Ameca will walk,” the company’s website reads.