Meet Affetto - A robot with realistic facial expressions

 Hisashi Ishihara, Yuichiro Yoshikawa and Prof. Minoru Asada of Osaka University in Japan have developed a new child robot platform called Affetto. Affetto can make realistic facial expressions so that humans can interact with it in a more natural way.

 Prof. Asada is the leader of the JST ERATO Asada Project that has been working on "Cognitive Developmental Robotics" which aims to understand the development of human intelligence through the use of robotics. (Learn more about the research that led to Affetto through this interview with Prof. Asada.)

 Affetto is modeled after a 1-2 year old child and will be used to study the early stages of humans' social development. There have been earlier attempts to study the interaction between child robots and people and how that relates to social development, but the lack of realistic child appearance and facial expressions hindered caregivers to attend to it in a more natural way.

 The paper describing the development of Affetto's head was published and presented at the 28th Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan.

 You can see the mechatronics inside Affetto, which probably should not be shown to the caregiver before any interaction or EVER.

 

 

 Here are some of the expressions that Affetto can make to share it's emotions with the caregiver.