The copycat robotic head, 'Jules' shows you what you look like when you make a face. Designed by roboticist David Hanson, it copies facial expressions captured by a video camera. Software translates the expressions to small electric motors under the robot's rubber skin, which move in accordance to recreate that expression. "However, because the robot's motors are not identical to human facial muscles, some artistic licence was required. After filming an actor making a variety of expressions indicating, say, "happiness", an expert animator selected 10 frames showing different variations of the expression and manually set the servos in Jules's face to match."
After seeing robots that can serve beer and coffee, this is a fresh twist on the use of this mechanism, which aims to improve social behaviours in difficult situations. Due to the reliance of human relationships on facial expressions, the mimicking robot can be useful in healthcare settings, such as nursing homes and with children. Robot trends are no longer a thing of the future? Seems so. But let's hope that even with the most realistic robots, we'll still always know the difference.
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