A UK company, Engineered Arts, unveiled Ameca, a humanoid, in the recently concluded CES 2022. Ameca is the product of 20 years of innovation that can do human gestures and natural movement. Coupled with cutting-edge AI, it blew the audiences away.
So, how does it differ from other robots and androids? What can it do that makes it the closest to the most futuristic robot that we can imagine?
Human Expression
The robot’s face looks so human. Although the face is gray, it makes its mark on the viewer with its features. Its brows, lips, and smooth movements make it look like a human being with a painted face. It is not like Sofia or other humanoids. Most of them give you a dead giveaway that they are made of plastic or silicone—their facial expressions are limited.
Ameca is made of metal and plastic. Its face’s color is genderless, and that is why it is gray. It has 17 individual motors that control its movements. What makes it different is that its gestures and expressions are so emotive. It can smile, look surprised, look sad, show approval, look confused, and so many more. The process that they used is animation—they looked at how humans move and made the animation of faces possible for the robot to do.
Human Interaction
Ameca can speak with you. One reporter said that the experience of interviewing the robot was uncannily human. Right now, it can only select one or two people to talk to in a crowd. The eyes have cameras, and Ameca can perform face detection. It can see faces and lock on to a specific person and talk to them.
It can also do directional audio tracking. Since it has a camera in each eye, it can also do stereo vision. Right now, it does not walk yet, but EA is working on it.
They admit that many people have already succeeded in making robots walk, but they want Ameca to have legs as close to a human being as possible, and that is the challenge. No one else has done that, and it can take a year and a half to launch the prototype.
Ameca has speakers in the chest, not in the mouth because the developers cannot fit the speakers in the mouth. If you talk to it, it will respond as a human being will do. However, it may not act like a human. One reporter asked Ameca if he could take a picture with it. Ameca said, “Yes, you may, thank you!” However, Ameca did not look at the camera.
Human Tasks
The robot can do many human tasks. However, the spokesperson said that there are other robots that can do these jobs better.
An excellent example of this is sweeping the floor. Today there are round discs robots that can do this without human supervision. These robots have AI, and they do their jobs well.
The spokesperson of Ameca said that a person is better off buying these machines because they are designed to do a particular task, whereas Ameca is not. Besides, Ameca costs more than a typical house.
Up until now, the use cases for Ameca were about entertainment and education. In the future, the plan is to convert Ameca into a service robot—robots that help humans. Some examples of these are hotel or airport concierges. Once it becomes available to people, you can tell it to access music, movies, a casino online, or even connect it to your smart home so it can turn on and off some devices.
Human AI
It can respond to a casual conversation. Here is what happened after the interviewer asked Ameca to have a picture taken:
Reporter: How was your day?
Ameca: My day has been fine. How about you?
Reporter: Yeah, great. I had my first picture with a robot.
Ameca: Good to know; I am your first.
Reporter: What is your favorite song?
Ameca: All by Myself
The operating system runs underneath the robot. It is a software program, so others can write apps for it. The app can be anything—it can be an AI that detects faces and remembers them the other day. It could be an app that gives a ticket for a certain show.
The company’s plan is to make it a platform like mobile devices are now and then have app developers make apps that can make the robot perform specific functions. As such, the robot can be sold to people, and the owners can download the apps specific to what the robot must do.
Ameca is touted as the future of robotics. It is the best example of robots that will eventually speak with humans and act like humans. In the years to come, people will first use it to answer human inquiries in business—perhaps to help people find their flights or take orders in a restaurant.
The AI, of course, has to keep up. While AI is at a high rate of development or progression right now, the physical aspects of the robotics industry are the challenge. Today, many people can program a machine to do human tasks, but the execution is the challenge.
