Affetto: a realistic robot baby is looking at you (w/ Video)
February 9, 2011 by Katie Gatto 
Image credit: Minoru Asada
(PhysOrg.com) -- Minoru Asada, a professor of Adaptive Machine Systems at Osaka University in Japan and head of the JST ERATO Asada Project, along with two of his colleagues; Hisashi Ishihara, a PhD candidate at Osaka University; and Yuichiro Yoshikawa, from the Dept. of Adaptive Machine Systems at Osaka University have developed a child-like robot platform called Affetto.
Affetto is designed to make a limited number of realistic human facial expressions in order to allow humans to interact with the robot in a more natural way. The ultimate aim is a field that Prof. Asada has dubbed "cognitive developmental robotics". The research aims to better understand the development of human intelligence through the use of robotics.
Image credit: Minoru Asada
The Affetto robot is designed to mimic the facial expressions of a young child, in the one to two year age range, and will be used to study the early stages of human social development.
Image credit: Minoru Asada
No specifics on future study design using Affetto have been released at this time, but this is not an entirely new area of research. Other attempts have been made to study the interaction between child robots and people, with a focus on social development, but most of those attempts have been less than successful because the robots lacked a realistic appearance and the ability to share feelings non-verbally. This prevented the caregivers in previous studies from attending to their robot babies in a matter similar to a human babies.
This video is not supported by your browser at this time.
Anyone interested in finding out more about Affetto's development process can look at the paper published by the researchers at the 28th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan last year.More information: * Japanese baby-bot to shed light on human learning (w/ Video)
via IEEE
© 2010 PhysOrg.com
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And the more realistic you make them look, but still lacking the spark of life, the creepier they become. Surely this 'creep-out factor' will affect any interaction results.
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