Tmsuk KOBIAN Robot Emotes Through Posture

Posted 23 May 2009 at 14:14 UTC by steve

There have been a variety of robots that emulate emotional expression through their facial features. Tmsuk has now created a humanoid robot that puts its whole body into the act, emoting like a silent film actor. KOBIAN is a descendant of the WABIAN-2R research humanoid and the WE-4R robot head, developed at the Takanishi Laboratory. The video above shows KOBIAN cycling through a variety of stock emotional expressions. Tmsuk claims the robot's postural emoting will make it better able to interact with humans. At least if the humans involved enjoy interacting with an emo robot. I think a future in stage performance may be more likely. For photos see the Japanese robot watch blog.

Robots Will Need Human Abilities, posted 6 Jun 2009 at 03:31 UTC by jmhenry » (Journeyer)

In order to effectively interact with humans, robots will need to imitate human abilities. They will need to emulate emotional expression and also be able to interact in an intuitive fashion. This robot is a step in that direction. For a robot to successfully work with the elderly, for example, it will need to be more than a machine that follows a programmed set of instructions. Hopefully, more development will occur in this type of robot.