Humans and robots have been interacting for ages now, so why are we not palling around with R2-D2 and C-3PO yet? Because we still have a long way to go before we can interact with them that well. Researchers at Keio University are working on a rather odd way to help this interaction along.
Masayasu Ogata’s PYGMY robot rings, recently seen at the Interaction 2012 Conference in Tokyo facilitates interaction by expressing emotion through a small mechanical display on each ring. Since scientists like to make things creepy, the display looks like a blinking eye.
The eyes can be controlled remotely or with a smartphone application. Some of the applications shown included games, voice recognition, finger walking and kicking. The idea is that the eyes can help display the “emotion” conveyed by the wearer’s fingers. While I’m not quite sure what the real world use would be for these, it will be interesting to see where they go with this technology.
[robots-dreams via Ubergizmo]
