Social RoboticsColumbia's Emo robot face learns to smile with you
A Science Robotics study showed a robotic face predicting a person's smile and mirroring it at the same moment.
Researchers at Columbia Engineering presented Emo, a robot head with 26 actuators under soft silicone skin and cameras in its pupils for eye contact. Emo first learned how its own face moves by making random expressions in front of a camera, then studied videos of people to predict their expressions. It can anticipate a smile about 840 milliseconds before it happens and smile in sync. Timely facial co-expression is a key ingredient of rapport, so the work points towards robots that feel less awkward in face-to-face interaction.
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