Emo, a robot that can predict your smile

When you think of smiling, Emo can anticipate it and will smile back in response. Emo is a robot face with a blue silicon skin, created by the engineers of Columbia University. Emo can predict a smile 839 milliseconds before it occurs.

The researchers explained how they trained it to predict the facial expression from human muscle movement. Emo learned the skill by analyzing hundreds of videos. Apart from its skill of smiling in sync with humans, it can mimic other facial expressions like raising an eyebrow and frowning.

Chaona Chen, a human-robot interaction researcher at the University of Glasgow in Scotland said, “I think a lot of people actually interacting with a social robot for the first time are disappointed by how limited it is,” says. He further mentioned how important it is to improve the real-time facial expressions of the robot.

In the future robots with synced facial expressions could act as a support in the loneliness epidemic, said Yuhang Hu, a robotic engineer at Columbia University who created Emo.

It has 26 actuators inside its blue skin enabling it to act on a wide range of facial expressions. It also has two cameras in its pupils which allows the robot to make steady eye contact and helps it in nonverbal communication.

“This revolution in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) paves the way for more authentic and meaningful interactions, where robots can understand and respond to human emotions in real-time,” said Yuhang HU

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