Video – Zeno the Robot Boy by David Hanson

If you are familiar with the story of Pinocchio then, like me, you’ll be surprised that Zeno, a robot boy presently being developed by David Hanson, presently does not appear to come with an inbuilt lie detector and extending nose but, lie detecting nose aside, what Zeno does offer is yet another tantalizing glimpse into the future of robotics and the mind boggles as to quite where its all going to lead.

Zeno the robot boy stands at 17 inches in height, weighs 6 pounds and is the result of a five year project at Hanson Robotics studying the development of interactive learning companions which are capable of conveying human emotions via a complex series of facial expressions made possible by the use of a special artificial skin material referred to as ‘frubber’. (Out of interest the previously featured Keepon Robot, though by no means as advanced, is also studying bot interaction with children, but though the use of dance, and the video is well worth a view if you’ve not already come across it).

Apparently inspired by the book ‘Supertoys Last All Summer Long’ by Brian Aldiss, which consequently hit the big screen in Spielberg’s adaptation ‘Artificial Intelligence: AI’, the research group headed at Hanson Robotics hope to have (no doubt seriously scaled down) Zeno Boy Robots commercially available within the next three years for around $200-$300.

You can see Zeno the Robot Boy in action in the video below though, at the time of writing, Zeno appears to be overly dependent on external computing power in order to function.

[Source | Physorg & AP/Tony Gutierrez (title image)]