Photos: Freakish CB2 child robot knows if you're sad

By Leslie Katz on 07 April 2009, 10:21am

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Photos: Freakish CB2 child robot knows if you're sad Image 1

Japan's Osaka University has developed a 'Child Robot with Biomimetic Body' (CB2 for short) that's meant to mimic its living counterparts and teach lessons about child development.

The bot is equipped with 51 air-powered motors and 197 tactile sensors under the soft, light-grey silicone skin covering its body. It measures about 4 feet and 3 inches tall, and weighs 33kg, which, size-wise, would make it about eight years old. It's designed to function like a child between the ages of one and two, though.

Since the eerie-looking bot first terrified the blogosphere in 2007, it has resurfaced as a more advanced creature.

Its creators report that CB2 is slowly developing social skills by recording human facial expressions via eye cameras, matching them with physical sensations, and then clustering them into basic categories -- sad, happy and so on -- on its circuit boards. With some assistance, it also can reportedly move across a room 'quite smoothly'. Osaka University engineering professor Minoru Asada, who is heading up the team behind CB2, said he hopes the pint-sized android will be speak in basic sentences within about two years.

We're all for robots teaching lessons about mother-baby relationships. But please, Japan, can you at least dress your next baby bot in a cute outfit or something?

Watch the Breitbart TV footage below to see CB2 rolling around on a table, making odd noises, and otherwise acting like a giant baby bot with a face only Wes Craven could love.

Photo credit: AFP Photo/Yoshikazu Tsuno