Your new BFF

“Scientists have created the first ‘humanoid’ robot that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being,” reports today’s Daily Mail. The robot, named Jules, is, as the paper delicately puts it, “a disembodied androgynous robotic head.” (Which, come to think of it, is kind of what all of us become when we go online.)

Here’s how it works:

Human face movements are picked up by a video camera and mapped onto the tiny electronic motors in Jules’ skin. It can grin and grimace, furrow its brow, and “speak” as the software translates real expressions observed through video camera “eyes.” Jules then mimics the facial expressions of the human by converting the video image into digital commands that make the robot’s servos and motors produce mirrored movements. And it all happens in real time as Jules can interpret the commands at 25 frames per second.

But let’s cut to the video:

I think I know who’s going to give the keynote at next year’s Singularity Summit.

9 thoughts on “Your new BFF”

  1. Seth Finkelstein

    Cool! Facial expressions are a hard problem.

    Did you know there’s already a thing called “FILM”, which captures the human soul, I mean, human facial movement, and imprisons it in a spray of chemicals on plastic? And once this “shooting” process is done, the end result can be played back endlessly, even when the human is long gone? Reports have already come in of people confusing what’s on the “film” with the actual human. What does it mean for our divinity?…

  2. alan

    “Scientists have created the first ‘humanoid’ robot that “attempts to mimic” the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being.

    Soul, chemicals, one giant leap, I mean almost, an assumption that the soul might ever be captured!

    Animation and the use of light comes close to capturing facial expressions but, “What does it mean for our divinity?. . . . . . . . . . .Nothing more than chaff in the wind!

    Alan

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