A human-like robot invented and built in Cornwall, made its first interactions with the public at a festival on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Part of the Cornwall Festival of Tech, the sell out event ‘Ameca: A Robot’s Journey to Creation’ saw about 250 participants attend Truro College to explore tech workshops, exhibits, and talks.<\/p>\n
The robot has made several appearance at events across the world, but the festival in Cornwall was the first chance for the public to see it up close.<\/p>\n
Some festival-goers said they were “gobsmacked” by its range of expressions while others found it “disconcerting.”<\/p>\n
Will Jackson, CEO of Falmouth based Engineered Arts, which created Ameca, said its facial expressions and gestures made it standout from other advanced humanoid robots.<\/p>\n
Mr Jackson said his team had focused on how the robot communicates to help with its purpose as a platform for artificial intelligence development.<\/p>\n
“The human face is one of the highest bandwidth communication tools, you can get a lot of information over,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You’re nodding your head a little bit, you’re making eye contact, your eyebrows raise a little bit, I can read a thousand words into every little gesture.<\/p>\n
“If we can bring that kind of capability to a robot it would make our communication so much more human-like, so that’s the idea.”<\/p>\n
Mr Jackson said Ameca had deliberately been designed not to look too realistic.<\/p>\n
“You’ll find the more it looks like people the more acceptable it becomes, up until a point where it gets very, very close.<\/p>\n
“Then you get a big dip and people go ‘I don’t like that’.<\/p>\n
“It’s at that point that you’ve started to blur the line between what’s human and what’s robot.”<\/p>\n
One woman at the Cornwall Festival of Tech told BBC Spotlight that Ameca was “a little bit disconcerting” due to how its robotic facial muscles moved and how human-like its hands were.<\/p>\n
A man at the festival said he was “gobsmacked” by the “amazing” robot and that he was impressed that it was made in Cornwall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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