felixthecat
September 13th, 2007, 06:26 PM
Texas Company Builds Emotional 'Robot Boy'
Thursday, September 13, 2007
RICHARDSON, Texas — David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days.
There's his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father's cramped office.
Then there's the robotic Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.
At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, the artificial Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics.
...
Unlike clearly artificial robotic toys, Hanson says he envisions Zeno as an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like, patented material Hanson calls frubber.
...
Hanson says one of the robot Zeno's biggest advancements is that its brains aren't inside the robot. Instead Zeno synchs wirelessly to a PC running a variant of Massive Software — the same Academy Award-winning code that enabled the fantastical battles among humans, orcs and elves in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296616,00.html
Thursday, September 13, 2007
RICHARDSON, Texas — David Hanson has two little Zenos to care for these days.
There's his 18-month-old son Zeno, who prattles and smiles as he bounds through his father's cramped office.
Then there's the robotic Zeno. It can't speak or walk yet, but has blinking eyes that can track people and a face that captivates with a range of expressions.
At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, the artificial Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics.
...
Unlike clearly artificial robotic toys, Hanson says he envisions Zeno as an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skin-like, patented material Hanson calls frubber.
...
Hanson says one of the robot Zeno's biggest advancements is that its brains aren't inside the robot. Instead Zeno synchs wirelessly to a PC running a variant of Massive Software — the same Academy Award-winning code that enabled the fantastical battles among humans, orcs and elves in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296616,00.html