Emotional expressions are one of the things that separate the human from the machine. But a new android named Nikola, consisting only of a head, aims to change that.
Nikola is part of the Guardian Robot Project, which aims to “unite psychology, brain science, cognitive science, and AI research for a future society where humans, AI, and robots can coexist flexibly.” it turns out. The research is supported by RIKEN, a research institute funded by the Japanese government.
The study, recently published in Frontiers in Psychology, describes Nikola’s methods of performing meaningful facial movements and his psychological data that both inform and confirm these movements. Emotions expressed in the study included anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.
“Social interaction is very important to humans,” says Wataru Sato, principal investigator of the project. “We think androids with such abilities will be very important in research and real-life applications.”
Elderly care is seen as a possible application area for such technologies. Of course, we’ll have to wait a little longer to see Nikola give interviews about CES like some of the other impressive robots we’ve seen before.
Sato says the next steps are to refine and expand Nikola’s facial expressions, giving him a voice and a body, and instilling emotional expressions that can work together for multimodal expression.
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