This intelligent plastic and metal robot looks like a one-year-old baby and is able to reproduce few movements and expressions like a child. The researchers incorporate in its little body a wide range of features that increases the abilities of a real baby.
This little anthropomorphic robot can move its eyes and change facial expressions like a child. The idea behind this project is to develop a customizable tool for research in cognitive and social development.
UCSD’s Machine Perception Laboratory designed Diego-san. The professor Javier Movellan led the team. The body of the robot is based on the Kokoro platform, while Hanson Robotics creates the head. The HR company is specialized to create realistic human like humanoid robots.
One of the main features of the baby is to display emotions like a human baby. With its abilities for emotions, Diego-san is able to express happiness, anger, or surprise. All these facial expressions together with its movements are powered by 18 electric RC servos hosted in its small body.
Back to specifications, Diego-San weighs much more than a baby. It weights around 30 kg (66 lb) and has a tall of around 1.2 m (4 ft).
Two cameras are located in the head and used as eyes, to hear around it uses two microphones, for movements use inertial measurement units and feel the environment with a large number of 88 pressure sensors.
Up to 44 pneumatic actuators powered by air are used for body movements.
Even Diego-San has a small body, it has up to 62 degrees of freedom and is one of the most flexible humanoid robot developed until now. The final product must be able to interact physically and use the facial mimicry with people.
The next development step until releases the final product is to develop the software to control the robot.
At the first view, Diego-San looks creepy, but it needs just a few moments to become the cutest robots developed until now.
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