14 DAY TRIAL // Human-like robots are an ongoing goal of many scientists around the world, but progress is slow, and done in parts, as the latest releases from Japan will show you.
A team of engineers led by Dr. Tomoko Yonezawa of Japan's Kansai University have put together a kind of robot (well, two of them) that can react to tense situations the same way we humans do.
That means that the robots can sweat and even get goosebumps in the presence of cold breezes or when told something scary.
The scientists did what they could to make the reactions “involuntary,” just like they are for us. It is their belief that robots would be accepted more easily if they reacted like us.
The second robot, the one that sweats, is more along the lines of a robot head. Presumably, the sweat is the result of anxiety, since fatigue probably isn't something that could ever apply to a bot with decent hydraulics and power delivery.
Now the only question I have is why go to such lengths to make robots emulate humankind when diversity, and the novelty of mechanical life, is the whole point of creating them.
Sure, some people probably want cybernetic humans for their own sake, but there's a reason most robots in fiction are clearly, well, robotic.