If we want to live in a world where we interact with robots, they'll have to be able to read and respond to our facial expressions in lightning-fast time. Now, scientists have come a step closer to creating such an advanced machine. 'Emo', built by experts at Columbia University in New York, is the fastest humanoid in the world when it comes to mimicking a person's expressions. In fact, it can'predict' a person's smile by looking for subtle signs in their facial muscles and imitate them so that they're effectively smiling at the same time. Amazing video shows the bot copying a researcher's facial expressions in real time with eerie precision and remarkable speed, thanks to cameras in its eyes. Columbia engineers build Emo, a silicon-clad robotic face that makes eye contact and can anticipate and replicate a person's smile at effectively the same time British-made Ameca is described as the'world's most advanced humanoid robot' Emo is the creation of researchers at Columbia University's Creative Machines Lab in New York, who present their work in a new study in Scientific Reports.

Long interested in the interactions between robots and humans, researchers in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have been working for five years to create EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft and expressive face that responds to match the expressions of nearby humans. The research will be presented at the ICRA conference on May 30, 2021, and the robot blueprints are open-sourced on Hardware-X (April 2021). "The idea for EVA took shape a few years ago, when my students and I began to notice that the robots in our lab were staring back at us through plastic, googly eyes," said Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation (Mechanical Engineering) and director of the Creative Machines Lab. Lipson observed a similar trend in the grocery store, where he encountered restocking robots wearing name badges, and in one case, decked out in a cozy, hand-knit cap. "People seemed to be humanizing their robotic colleagues by giving them eyes, an identity, or a name," he said. "This made us wonder, if eyes and clothing work, why not make a robot that has a super-expressive and responsive human face?"

While our facial expressions play a huge role in building trust, most robots still sport the blank and static visage of a professional poker player. With the increasing use of robots in locations where robots and humans need to work closely together, from nursing homes to warehouses and factories, the need for a more responsive, facially realistic robot is growing more urgent. Long interested in the interactions between robots and humans, researchers in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have been working for five years to create EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft and expressive face that responds to match the expressions of nearby humans. The research will be presented at the ICRA conference on May 30, 2021, and the robot blueprints are open-sourced on Hardware-X (April 2021). "The idea for EVA took shape a few years ago, when my students and I began to notice that the robots in our lab were staring back at us through plastic, googly eyes," said Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation (Mechanical Engineering) and director of the Creative Machines Lab. Lipson observed a similar trend in the grocery store, where he encountered restocking robots wearing name badges, and in one case, decked out in a cozy, hand-knit cap.

What does it mean for a robot to be self-aware? That's exactly what this robotics lab is investigating as they embark on a quest towards artificial consciousness. We develop machines that can design and make other machines - automatically." The Challenge of Determining Whether an A.I. Is Sentient https://slate.com/technology/2016/04/... "It is not easy to determine when an organism is sentient, however. A brief recount of past and present controversies and mistakes makes it clear that human beings are not great at recognizing sentience."

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. This video shows some impressively robust autonomous rough-terrain locomotion from ANYmal, but it's mostly worth watching for the epic ANYmal back massage (!) at the end: We present an architecture for rough-terrain locomotion with quadrupedal robots. All sensing, state estimation, mapping, control, and planning runs in real-time onboard the robot.

Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing conference. If you've been staying on top of artificial intelligence news lately, you may know that the games of chess and Go were two of the grand challenges for AI. But do you know what the equivalent is for robotics? Just think about how the game requires razor sharp perception and movement, a tall order for a machine. As entertaining as human vs. robot games can be, what they actually demonstrate is much more important.

Is creativity a uniquely human trait? Defining the line between human and machine is becoming blurrier by the day as startups, big companies, and research institutions all compete to build the next generation of advanced AI. This arms race is bringing a new era of AI that won't prove its power by mastering human games, but by independently exhibiting ingenuity and creativity. Sophisticated AI is undertaking increasingly complex tasks like stock market predictions, research synthesis, political speech writing--don't worry, this article was still written by a human--and companies are beginning to pair deep learning with new robotics and digital manufacturing tools to create "smart manufacturing." Hod Lipson, professor of engineering at Columbia University and the director of Columbia's Creative Machines Labs, is pushing the next frontier of AI.