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 facial expression thanks to cutting-edge motion capture technology and mimic 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.
Other robots made by Engineered Arts now include automated speech recognition, enabling people to converse with the robot. However, they claim that because this technology is still in its infancy, it cannot discern finer nuances of language, such as sarcasm, tone of voice, or context.
Since it was established in 2005, Engineered Arts has made great strides with its work. RoboThespian, a pleasant but cartoonish-looking humanoid who could recite theoretical speeches and songs, was one of their earliest robots. However, he lacked reality. Mesmer, a highly realistic robot that resembles a lifelike human dummy, then appeared. It missed some of the intricacies that Ameca is able to pull off, though.
Ameca can be purchased or hired for a function, gathering, or publicity stunt. Engineered Arts will even create a robot in your likeness if you have the funds to do so. YouTuber Tom Scott visited Engineered Arts in order to have a robot version of himself created, with predictably bizarre results.
