Quite a lot has transpired in the
android universe in the past two years, and it's fairly safe to say that
Kansei has made a few solid strides during that time as well. A Japanese research team has purportedly crafted a working prototype that can "pull up to 36 different
facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords." According to a professor at Meiji University's School of Science and Technology, the idea of the project is to "create a flow of consciousness in robots so that they can make the relevant facial expressions," and the device relies on 19 movable parts and a silicon face mask in order to work its magic. Developers also noted that speech abilities should be added within a few years, and while we doubt you had to guess, it's quite likely that fully developed Kanseis will one day roam nursing homes as
Japan seeks to care for its quickly growing geriatric set.
