AI 140 British Android ‘Jules’ Mimics Facial Expressions with human like qualities

Scientists at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) have devised the first android robot that can perform the precise lip movements and facial expressions of human beings.

Named ‘Jules’, the robot can automatically copy human movements by capturing them with its video camera ‘eyes’ and mapping them onto small electronic motors in its skin.

The process allows Jules’ disembodied androgynous robotic head to grin and grimace, furrow its brow and 'speak'.

Jules mimics these expressions by converting the video images into digital commands, which allow the robot's servos and motors to produce copies of these movements in real time. Indeed, the robot can interpret commands at 25 frames per second.

Robotics engineers Chris Melhuish, Neill Campbell and Peter Jaeckel worked three-and-a-half years developing the groundbreaking software that allows the interaction between humans and artificial intelligence. Jules has 34 internal motors covered with flexible rubber ('Frubber') skin, which was commissioned from U.S. roboticist David Hanson for the project.

The quality of the androids is getting better and better as they become more human like, such as:

• Repliee R-1 (refer to AI 101)

• Intelligent female" android from Tokyo’s robotdreams.com (refer to AI 99)

AI 101: A Japanese android girl ready for mass production

A robot that looks and moves eerily like a human child is set to go into mass production.

This cyber girl, known as Repliee R-1 (shame about the name), has flexible silicon skin, eyes that blink and hair in pigtails.

Developed by a Japanese university, the Repliee R-1 is the latest in a series of robot suits, or Hybrid Assistive Limb technology, each with more lifelike looks, feel and movement.

Modelled on a real five-year-old Japanese girl, the robot suit has 50 sensors and a series of motors to allow it to move more realistically than any android yet built.

Its inventors hope the machine will help pensioners and disabled people move better.

Robotics company Cyberdyne Inc plans to start producing the technology on a mass scale as early as this week, according to reports.

AI 4: Consumer androids to provide personalised health services

Care-O-bot is an android assistant to assist elderly or handicapped people in daily life activities. Care-O-bot can manipulate simple objects found typically in home environments. It is equipped with a manipulator arm, adjustable walking supporters, a tilting sensor head containing two cameras and a laser scanner, and a hand-held control panel. Care-O-bot is a development of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) in Stuttgart, Germany.

This is an illustration of a consumer robot that can be connected to Cloud Services for digital conversations with patients and alerting say nurses when sensing conditions warrant human specialist support.

This market could be worth US$2bn to US$10bn a year by 2018.

These type of androids could provide first level health advice.

The scenario of consumer robots being powered as a Cloud Service (Web 3.0) is not a technical issue and shows the excitement around the roadmap for Web 4.0 and Web 5.0 (refer to blog reference AI 1).

The implications for Microsoft (refer to blog reference AI 2) and Google (refer to blog reference AI 3) future competitiveness is in the balance.