Have researchers at the National University of Singapore designed a robot that knows how to love? According to project lead Hooman Samani, they’ve made significant progress.
Lovotics, the robot that loves you back, observes user behavior through motion sensors and cameras, then mirrors that behavior. Get closer to Lovotics, and it moves closer to you. Talk to it and it responds like R2D2 or WALL-E.
They’ve got a long way to go, though. Visually, Lovotics is a big ball of fuzz on wheels with very little stimulation for the user. Cosmetics such as eyes and mouth will presumably come when the programming is further along.
It’s an interesting concept. Remove the marketing component and you have a robot that independently reads the input from a user, processes that input by type (audio, visual, spacial, etc.), and responds with a corresponding output. The possibilities of this are endless.
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As for the emotion component, I’d call this a near dead end. People would give this one a pass for the most part, at least until Soomani’s team makes a robot that is “fully functional, programmed in multiple techniques.”
If they get that part down, there’ll be two of these in every home.
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