Wall-mounted interactive robot mimics emotions, follows you around, wants to be friends (video)

Not every robot is here to make our food, clean our floors or perform interstellar maintenance for us. Some automatons are there to simply be admired... or in the case of GIA (Gestural Interactive Automaton), to admire us. GIA's a robotic sculpture created by Daniel Jay Bertner that is essentially a projector, projection sphere and a webcam attached to a trio of servo-controlled articulating arms. A human face is projected on the sphere, which follows around folks who view it and changes its facial expression according to viewer reactions. Why? In order to "emulate and socially engage" them and facilitate a better understanding between man and machine, of course. The magic happens through open source motion tracking and facial recognition software, but you don't have to take our word for it -- see for yourself in the video after the break.

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Wall-mounted interactive robot mimics emotions, follows you around, wants to be friends (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 06:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.