At the University of California they have developed arobot with the face of the physicistAlbert Einsteinwhat haslearned to smile and perform other facial gesturesso“autodidact”.
Specifically, the robot’s head has30 “muscles”, somewhat less than the face of the human being, each of which moves with a small independent motor. The “skin” is made of an elastic polymer calledFrubber, developed by the Hanson Robotics company, which gives it great doses of realism. To “teach” Einstein-robot to express emotions with his face, the researchers, led by Javier Movellan, placed amirrorin front of him in order for him to analyze his own expressions. This provided the machine with the data necessary to “learn” the relationship between gestures and the movements of its motors. Once these relationships were established, the robot was able to develop new gestures for which it had not been originally programmed.
The researchers compare their method with thebabblingthat precedes the learning of speech in children. We babble in order, through these “throat games”, to obtain information about the consequences of our movements in the external physical world, for example the sounds we emit. In the case of the robot, it “babbles expressions until it understands the kinematics of its own face,” Mavellan explained during the presentation of his work at the 2009 IEEE 8TH (INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING).
Scientists hope that the headandroidNow help them to better understand how children learn facial expressions.
