Imagine a humanoid robot with a human face, literally and figuratively, namely a robot as real as life, with very living skin. This is the feat of Japanese researchers, who have “cultured” skin from living cells in the laboratory, which can be applied to the “face” of an android, which thus benefits from all the elasticity of a human epidermis to reproduce realistic facial expressions. Their work was published in June in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science. This actual cultured skin tissue with ligaments can not only deform, but also self-heal.
The realism of the skin of future humanoid robots, if not flesh and blood, could allow them to be better accepted by humans… unless they are rather frightened by it. This is called the “disturbing valley” effect (« uncanny valley », in English), which, in robotics and animation, refers to the negative emotional reaction of humans towards robots or objects that almost, but not quite, resemble them.
The Chinese company Ex Robots, based in Panjin (northeast of Beijing), develops humanoid robots to which it applies a silicone skin that it has patented. This is therefore not natural, but comes from a chemical composition (polymer), which still gives realistic skin. The company’s robots are thus presented as being able to “express emotions” and have “facial reactions”. Between increasingly advanced mechatronics (the mechanical-electronic-computer alliance), incredible skin envelopes and artificial brains doped with AI, the race for new generation androids is now very real.
Assistance and disguise
But beware of jokes or scams! During his We, Robot day on October 10 in Los Angeles, the boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla, Elon Musk, proudly showed prototypes of his humanoid robot Optimus, supposed to be autonomous. At first glance, they are capable of serving drinks, walking the dog or looking after children. Except that there was deception: the models presented were in reality assisted remotely by humans. Ex Robots also fooled its world: during the world robotics conference held in Beijing from August 21 to 27, the Chinese company created a buzz by fooling its visitors with so-called larger-than-life humanoid robots. They were in fact women disguised as robots, but their appearance was deceptive.
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