Tag: HUMANOID

A metal robot may not look like a human being, but as long as it acts like one, babies won't be able to tell the difference. That's the conclusion that researchers at University of Washington reached, after studying the ways 18 -month-year-old babies interact with humanoid bots. To observe the baby-bot dynamic, scientists placed each child in a room with a remote-controlled robot along with ...

Folks, we hate to keep repeating ourselves, but all those old sci-fi scenarios are really, truly coming to pass. Take the Acroban robot, for example. Child-like, doe-eyed robot? Yes. From a futuristic manufacturer with a creepily sunny name? Yup: the bot's developers refer to themselves as Inria Flowers. Super-creepy, lo-fi video of real human children playing alongside said robot? Check. (After ...

Robot designer Hiroshi Ishiguro has a flair for creepy, wax-figure verisimilitude. Ishiguro has invented an entirely new distribution curve for the Uncanny Valley, hanging steadily in the middle of both the appealing/unappealing and endearing/frightening axes. A couple years back, Ishiguro created a robot version of himself (well, more of an evil twin), and now he's come up with an uncanny ...

Yesterday, our pals over at Engadget reported on Ropid, the humanoid robot that proudly parades around, runs in place, and hops a quarter of its own height (video above). Today, more videos emerged of the little guy, and some of the Switched staff was torn. Some of us were horrified, especially after seeing earlier in the week the Army-produced, disembodied pair of legs that can run in place and ...

Tmsuk is back with even more crazy humanoid antics, this time demonstrating a shopping robot that can be controlled from far, far away. The modified TMSUK-4 humanoid showcased in Kitakyushu, Japan was actually being controlled by an elderly lady in her home via an NTT DoCoMo video-capable cell phone. Essentially, the technology enabled her to see through the eyes of the robot and presumably ...