Japanese Robotics Company Builds a Chucky Look-alike
A joint collaboration between the University of California’s Machine Perception Laboratory and Japan’s Kokoro Co. Ltd. have ended up producing a small baby-faced robot named Diego-san. This bulbous-headed robot is designed to help scientists understand skill development in human babies.
For this purpose, the 4 foot tall robot has been programmed to mimic the behavior of a one year old child.
Thus, it has 60 movable parts in its body and 20 such bits in its face. The former, with bits like the five-fingered hands, will help the baby bot manipulate its immediate surrounds.
This included the ability to pick up objects and stretch up after crouching.
As for the large head, it was wired up so as to imitate different human expressions.
For optimal mimicking of human motor skills and expressions, the folks fitted it with a high resolution camera, a speaker and 6-axis accelerometers.
By shinigami on 05-02-2010
