BRITAIN’S Engineered Arts’ humanoid robot, Ameca, made its first contact with the public at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, the largest technology fair on the planet.
During the event, a large crowd gathered to watch Ameca almost every second and interacted with the robot, whose facial features are surprisingly vivid and emotive.
Ameca does not only respond to visitors’ questions much like Alexa, Amazon’s cloud-based AI voice service available on hundreds of millions of devices, but also responds to conversations with proper recreated expressions.
Ameca has teeth, and its body is made of metal and plastic. Its face is gender-neutral and a non-human grey colour. It has 17 individual motors inside its head controlling all its movements and expressions.
Despite dazzling spectators with the eerily lifelike expressions on its mobile silicon face, the robot is still unable to walk. According to the company, walking is a challenging task and it is in their development plans.
Ameca blinked its way into public consciousness in late 2021, when a video of its facial expressions went viral on social media. Elon Musk responded to the video with one word, “Yikes.”
This isn’t the first hauntingly humanoid robot Engineered Arts has released. For the past four years, the company has been creating a line of lifelike Mesmer robots.
Besides Ameca, Hong Kong-based engineering and robotics company Hanson Robotics designed and released in 2016 a similar humanoid robot, Sophia, who was named the UN Development Programme’s first Innovation Champion in 2017, becoming the first non-human to be given a UN title.
“The main use for the humanoid robot right now is entertainment, communication and interaction with other people,” said Engineered Arts director of operations, Morgan Roe, in his video.
“Ameca is the pinnacle of what we can do. We didn’t make her exactly like a human, we designed her as we envision robots of the future,” Roe said.
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