Communications of the ACM
Japan's Creepy Kid Robots Perfect Pals For Chucky
Does Noby's hat hide devil horns?
Credit: Japan Science and Technology Agency
Japanese engineers have created two robots designed to interact with children and mimic human growth.
Noby, modeled after a nine-month-old baby, is the size of an infant and weighs about 17 pounds. Osaka University professor Minoru Asada and colleagues at the University of Tokyo have provided Noby with 600 sensors, which enables the robot to show interest in toys and objects and display other behaviors. A larger robot, M3-Kindy, is based on a five-year-old child, weighs about 60 pounds, and has 42 motors and more than 100 tactile sensors. M3-Kindy can recognize speech, mimic facial expressions, and crawl around or walk hand-in-hand with someone.
View a video of M3-Kindy in motion.
Noby and M3-Kindy have soft synthetic skin, ear microphones, and eye cameras. The researchers say the robots could inform cognitive development and lead to better robot-human interaction.
From CNet
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