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| The Emotional Machine |
| Robotics - Academia | |||||
| Friday, 05 June 2009 12:00 | |||||
 Researchers at Waseda University in Japan have been working for years on robots capable of human-like emotional response. These machines express themselves by moving their lips, their eyelids, craning their neck, twisting their torso and moving their arms. Presently these may appear to be just curiosities, but these technologies will allow robots of the future to more effectively interact with human beings.The WE-RII Emotion Expression RobotWaseda has produced many different robots, but the WE-4RII is perhaps the most capable of mimicking the emotional responses of humans. The robot is also outfitted with several sensors – visual, tactile, olfactory and auditory, giving it the ability to react to a variety stimuli.
Waseda’s WE-4RII page gives further details:
WE-4RII expresses its facial expression using its eyebrows, lips, jaw, facial color and voice. The eyebrows consist of flexible sponges, and each eyebrow has 4-DOF. WE-4RII has two color CCD cameras in its eyes. The images from its eyes are captured to a PC by an image capture board. WE-4RII can recognize any color as the targets and it can recognize eight targets at the same time. After calculating the gravity and area of the targets , WE-4RII can follow them with the eye, the neck and the waist. This makes it possible to follow the target with any collor in the three dimension space. We used spindle-shaped springs for WE-4RII's lips. The lips change their shape by pulling from 4 directions, and WE-4RII's jaw that has 1-DOF opens and closes the lips. We used two small condenser microphones as the auditory sensation. WE-4RII can localize the sound directions from the loudness between the right and the left. WE-4RII has tactile and temperature sensations in the human cutaneous sensation. We used the FSR (Force Sensing Resistor) as tactile sensation FSR is able to detect even very weak forces, and is a thin and light device. We devised a method for recognizing not only the magnitude of the force, but also the difference of the touching manner that are "Push", "Stroke", "Hit", by using a 2 layers structure with FSR. On the other hand, WE-4RII has a Thermistor the temperature sensor. FSRs are also installed on the palms to detect whether it has been contacted or not. We used the four semiconductor gas sensors as the olfactory sensation. We set them in WE-4RII's nose. WE-4RII can recognize the smells of alcohol, ammonia and cigarette smoke. The Robot's Mental StateThe researchers have not only given the robot a personality and mental state, but also incorporated a ‘need’ model which gives the robot various desires such as appetite, need for security and the desire for exploration.
Again, from Waseda:
The robot can actively generate and express its behavior based on its need in order to satisfy its need. And, the robot with need continues to exhibit the same behavior until the robot satisfies its need as a result of active behavior. We also considered that the need was one of the internal stimuli to the robot. By assigning the Sensing Personality for the need, the need affect the mental state. The robot also possesses a memory system that has been fused with emotional state. Much like humans, when a memory of an experience is created, the present emotional state is also stored.
The WE-RII in ActionThe WE-4RII demonstrating human-like movement, emotional response and reactions:
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3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved." |
that's impressive. I knew the Japanese were really advancing in the field of robotics but didn't know that their bots were capable of such human-like motion. Now if only the U.S. would get off it's butt and show the world what we can do!
