From pleasing to frightening, robots built to imitate humans can be creepy, very creepy. In fact, according to the “uncanny valley principle” the more lifelike robots become to humans, without exactly replicating them, the more disdain the living have toward them. The “valley” refers to a drop in a graph of comfort level as robots become more lifelike. FACE (Facial Automation for Conveying Emotions) is a robot built to make robots less creepy by possessing more lifelike facial features. However, they may have created the creepiest robot yet.
A team from the University of Pisa, led by Ph.D. student Nicole Lazzeri, have created the FACE robot to display six emotional expressions. The bot is modeled after one of the team members wives, and is capable of showing happiness, sadness, disgust, amazement, indifference, and fear along with a combination of any of those mentioned. The expressions work by 32 motors behind the polymer skin controlling the expressions similar to the muscles in a human face. The movements are based on a system that has been around for more than 30 years called the Facial Action Coding System(FACS). In addition, facial expressions are chosen and calculated through a mathematical program called HEFES. They can choose any basic expression or any combination of expressions and an algorithm works out which motors need to be moved and how much they need to be moved.
The authenticity of the expressions was tested upon a small group of people including 15 children and 5 autistic children. It was found that fear, disgust, and surprise were not easily identified while happiness, anger, and sadness were more dominant and easy to recognize. FACE is a robot that is successful at smoothly transitioning between facial expressions. However, I found that the transitions are too slow for it to be near lifelike. Although they set out trying to make a robot that was pleasant, I think they may have made the creepiest robot yet!
Cabe
