Welcome to the “world’s most advanced human-shaped robot,” Ameca, who can imitate a variety of human expressions, from glee to shock, all of which are equally remarkable and unsettling. Come with us into the uncanny valley and meet Ameca.
Engineered Arts, a firm located in the UK that creates humanoid robots for entertainment, information, education, and research, created Ameca.
The second generation of the model, which you are currently viewing, has almost 12 more motors in its face than the first, resulting in a greater variety of facial expressions. Now it can purse its lips, wink, and scrunch its nose.
The humanoid robot now has five additional motors in the neck and 27 more in the face. There are 12 in the lips, 2 in the jaw, 4 each in the eyeballs, 4 each in the eyelids, 4 each in the brows, and 1 in the nose.
Its body, arms, wrists, and fingers all have several motors that allow it to move its upper limbs. You might be relieved to learn that Ameca is currently immobile and unable to walk.
The robot can recognize a human face expression thanks to cutting-edge motion capture technology and duplicate it by carefully moving its numerous motors. Additionally, it has the ability to wave with its hands and use its arms to respond.
Engineered Arts stated in a statement issued to IFLScience that “the human face is a very high bandwidth communication channel – we can tell so much with expressions alone, words are not always essential.”
They continued, “We are striving toward robots that seem entirely natural to interact with, robots that can read and generate emotional messages via facial expressions.
