The Chinese contribution to the creepy robot parade
Chinese scientists have developed a robot that makes body movements and appropriate facial expressions, to be used in preschool classrooms to help kids with rudimentary knowledge development. Named "Baizhixing" ("smart star"), the little 35 cm tall robot is intentionally cartoonish and animal-like so as to be more readily accepted by young children. Under the overalls, Baizhixing integrates control systems, mechanical structures, speech synthesis and scalable networking technologies. Is it just us, or does this little guy look like an aging, pudgy, and stoned version of Jen the Gelfling?
