Android Copy of Danish Man Unveiled

An anonymous reader writes "The Geminoid family, a series of ultra-realistic androids, each a copy of a real person, has a new member: Geminoid DK, a robot clone of a Danish researcher and the most realistic Geminoid yet. The robot has lifelike facial features and movements, blinking, smiling, frowning with incredible realism. The Danish researcher, Henrik Scharfe of Aalborg University, teamed up with Japanese animatronics firm Kokoro and roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro to create his robot twin, which he plans to use to study human-robot interaction and cultural differences in the perception of robots. This is the first Geminoid that is not based on a Japanese person; it's also the first bearded one."

Comments

realistic looking

[Sir_Lewk]

I was at first shocked at how realistic this was, but then I realized that I probably was thinking that because they didn't model as a young Japanese woman with perfect skin. Seriously, there are so many robot heads modelled that way, real young Japanese women are almost starting to seem robotic.

Animatronic vs. Robot

[orkysoft]

This robot is really just an animatronic device, like they have at Disneyland (or so I hear). It's controlled by someone behind the scenes using a computer. The purpose is to study how people interact with it, knowing that it's not real. The interesting thing about regular robots is that they're supposed to control themselves, and research concentrates not just on designing new kinds of sensors and actuators (limbs) and body plans, but especially the software to control them.

Still, it looks very impressive, but I'm not sure how this progresses the development of sensors, actuators, or control software. It seems more like a sophisticated crafts project to me. Are the researchers also going to have test subjects interact with a non-realistic human-shaped robot to see how they react to it, to compare with the realistic looking one?