Kansei
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Kansei makes a comeback with reactive facial expressions
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.
Japanese prof thinks robots need emotional sensibilities
Aside from providing the world with great gadgets, entertainment devices and robots -- the Japanese have now answered the question that every robot enthusiast since Isaac Asimov has been trying to answer: how do we improve robot-humanoid interaction? Professor Shuji Hashimoto, director of the humanoid robotics centre at Waseda University in Tokyo, has a theory: robots need a solid dose of those Japanese manners (don't we all?) encompassed in the Japanese word kansei, which includes feelings, mood, intuitiveness and sensibility. Hashimoto spoke to a conference on "socially intelligent robots" at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK last week, saying that "Robots are going to need similar emotional capabilities if they are to cooperate smoothly and flexibly with humans in our residential environments." How would that translate from the theoretical academic ivory tower to the living room lab of a domesticated robot? According to NewScientist, who covered Hashimoto's UK talk, "if a robot's owner is sweating and has a racing pulse, say, the robot will sense this and decide that now might not be the time to offer them the TV guide or tonight's dinner menu." Still, we're sure that Hashimoto wasn't talking smack about our new favorite polite robot, the EMIEW -- otherwise we might have to sic a legion of BEAR robots on him.[Thanks, Matt]
