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Ameca the robot is more human (and haunting) than I ever imagined

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https://www.cnet.com/news/ameca-the-robo...-imagined/

EXCERPT: . . . Ameca isn't destined for the conference circuit. It doesn't run and jump like the robots created by Boston Dynamics, and it's not something you can preorder now as a household helper.

Roe says it'll be at least 10 years before a robot like Ameca is "walking amongst us" as a service robot. Sure, Walking Among Us sounds like the title of the documentary that'll eventually chronicle the decline of humanity, but we've got another decade before we need to worry about that.

[...] Ameca also doesn't have ... flesh-colored skin tones. In place of the lifelike human hair on Mesmer's head, Ameca has a translucent plastic skull. We see the robot's joints and parts. Ameca is still undoubtedly "other," and that's deliberate.

"What we found was, when you try and make it look ultra lifelike [like] our other Mesmer line, it looks a bit more sinister, because it's right in the uncanny valley," Roe says. "But when we created Ameca, we pulled it backwards out of the uncanny valley."

Of course, as Roe is saying these things to me over our Zoom call, Ameca is responding. Raising its eyebrows at people walking past. Subtly moving its lips (or, more accurately, the actuators around its mouth hole) as though trying to ape the speech of its human creator.

"Because it looks less human..." says Roe, while Ameca smiles into the middle distance.

"Because it's plastic, because it's metal..." says Roe, Ameca glancing over at him with a vague smile.

"Because it's of gray skin, it's suddenly..." Roe waves his hand near Ameca's face and the robot leans back, startled.

"Ooh, hello," says Roe, making eye contact with the humanoid and leaning back in startled unison. He's lost his train of thought. "It's suddenly, uh, less -- less scary."

[...]  "When you're working with it day to day, it's suddenly, definitely a robot. And a lot of the time you'll see one of the engineers walking through the workshop, not with a robot, with just the head. And you have to distance yourself from it being a human. Otherwise, then it's really sinister." (MORE - missing details)


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/LzBUm31Vn3k
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