Canadian Engineer Building a Real Android

Everyone knows robots are cool and useful, but they can also be creepy. Part of the reason is, even if the robot has a reasonable facsimile of the human face, they tend to be cool to the touch, sometimes even harsh. Now one Canadian engineer is designing a way for robots to not just mimic the expressions of humans but also simulate their warm skin.

Emil Petriu of the University of Ottawa decided to look to biology rather than robotics when he set out to build his life-like android. The most important part is a biology-inspired artificial skin, which has sensors that not only sense contact but can also discern temperature and the elasticity of the surface. So if the sensor detects it’s touching something 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit and soft, then it’s probably a person, and the robot can react accordingly.

On the other side of the touch, the human will feel a warm and soft surface as well, thanks to tubes within the artificial skin that circulate hot water. Also part of the design: an anatomically correct simulation of a human skull, which moves realistically thanks to an elaborate set of artificial motors and a spring-loaded jaw. The skull will be covered in the elastic skin, with the aimed result to create a life-like face.

Petriu’s method is novel: He’s starting with a bulky, mechanical bot and replacing its parts, one by one, with more human-like appendages, starting with the head and hands. The whole thing sounds a little like transforming C-3PO from Star Wars into Data from Star Trek.

Petriu should proceed with caution, however, if research into human-robot interactions is any indication. There have been many human-resembling robots created (mainly in Japan), and a recurring problem is that humans respond better to robots the more life-like they are — to a point. Once the android starts to closely resemble an actual person, humans respond negatively, apparently because they start to notice the robot’s subtle differences from a person (lack of body language, for one) more than its similarities. The phenomenon is known as the “uncanny valley” (seen below).

Still Petriu appears confident his research could lead to androids that would be useful in numerous fields, like nursing and home care. Petriu told the CBC that he also sees life-like robots being a way to hang onto human connection in our increasingly “disconnected” world that socializes virtually.

“Our society is becoming more and more disconnected,” he says. “We are, after all, still social beings.”

Do you think the idea of an android companion that keeps you company while you chat with friends on Facebook and Google+ has merit? Maybe the robot could even be tied into those services somehow, providing a kind of avatar for the people you connect with.

What other possibilities are there? Get creative in the comments.

by Peter Pachal