More Creepiness from the Robotics World

As if the Japanese Mini-Me dolls weren’t creepy enough, David Hanson of Dallas TX has created a robot Einstein bust that is, in essence, more human than human. It reads human emotions, responds with it’s own, and is soon planned to be able to decipher a genuine smile.

He’s created the robot to be pseudo-empathic, reading people’s facial expressions and reacting accordingly with his own. He’s managed to recreate 42 facial muscles with motors that make many of them more versatile than actual human muscle.

Now backtrack a bit to the Mini-Me doll… it can mimic your voice and perform basic intelligent functions… combine that with the intelligence of Hanson’s Einstein head, then the ultra-intelligent robots that Honda are building which can dance and such…don’t you see the next step as being a ME REPLICA? They already have life-like latex anatomically correct love dolls which look completely real, with the combination of the previously mentioned technologies, we’re only a few decades, if that, from having fully functional and intelligent life-like robots, just like in Artificial Intelligence.

We’re on our way, and I’m caught somewhere between excited and morbidly afraid. I’ve seen the Animatrix too many times to be comfortable with this idea.

Check out the article here.