Japanese have once again taken robot technology to new heights. Recently, a robot exhibiting human like facial expressions was showcased in National Science Museum in Tokyo.
Named as Alter, the robot uses a central pattern generator (CPG) to create a neural network that gives life to it’s facial muscles, making them react to external stimuli. It’s not just the face, his hands and arms can also move, reacting to external stimuli.
Engadget reports that the movement is not very human like, but it gives an observer a “strange sensation that this particular robot is somehow alive”.
The objective of the project was to enable robot to control its own moment. The researchers refer to this loose degree of flexibility as “chaos”. Alter’s arm and head movement is it’s own decision and not activated by human intervenience. This decision is influenced by a set of sensors that gather data about external influences: proximity, humidity, noise and temperature.
The sensors are like the robot’s skin which behaves similar to a human’s sense organs, but not to that complexity. The robot can react based on the surrounding environment. For example, it’s proximity sensors can detect a lot of people around and can make the robot shudder as a reaction.
The robot can sing too, but in way that would frighten people. For now the humanoid can only croon in sine-wave melody, but researchers believe that the future models will come with more advanced sound chips.
