A Chinese robotics company has unveiled a creepy robotic head with eerily human-like facial expressions and movements.
In an unnerving video, the robot’s disembodied face sits on a workshop table as it looks around, blinking and opening its mouth.
AheadForm, the company behind the lifelike animatronic, says its body-less robot is designed for ‘research and interaction’.
On social media, tech fans have been blown away by the robot’s incredibly realistic expressions, with one calling it an ‘animated video game character come to life’.
According to AheadForm’s website, the company’s goal is to create ‘sophisticated humanoid robot heads that can express emotions, perceive their environment, and interact seamlessly with humans.’
The robot, dubbed the AheadForm Origin M1, gets its expressive abilities from 25 tiny motors hidden under the skin.
These fast, quiet devices work together to replicate the tiny twitches and movements that make the face seem so realistic.
The robot also has tiny cameras embedded in its eyes as well as hidden microphones and a speaker so that it can interact with people nearby.
Although this robot is just a face mounted on a stand, the short test video has wowed fans.
One commenter wrote: ‘And I thought they could never make that skin look real. This is crazy.’
Another chimed in: ‘The most realistic robot face so far, keep up the book work you will earn big! If I was Musk I would have already bought the company.’
And one praised the design, saying that robotics was now ‘finally climbing up the other side of uncanny valley’.
In fact, one of the biggest complaints was that the robot is so realistic that people couldn’t believe it was real.
‘This looks more like an AI creation than a physical creation,’ one commenter complained.
Another added: ‘The moving parts underneath are very minimal. It could be AI.’
And one jokingly wrote: ‘They want me to believe that this is real.’
But not everyone was such a big fan of the hyper-realistic disembodied woman’s face.
One commenter wrote: ‘Making a robot more human looking isn’t making it more approachable. That just makes it more disturbing.’
Another joked: ‘Great, man made horrors beyond my comprehension.’
The robot is not currently available for commercial sale, and AheadForm did not provide any additional information about the product.
The company’s stated goal is to create ‘head for AI’ so that large language models like ChatGPT can speak to people directly in a more natural setting.
This could be useful for applications like customer service, education, or healthcare, where people are expected to spend more time speaking to robotic assistants.
To achieve this, its robots use AI algorithms to power a set of motors in order to create human-like expressions.
Last year, AheadForm’s founder, Yuhang Hu and his colleagues published a paper in the journal Science Robotics explaining their approach.
The researchers described how they designed a robot which could study, predict, and mimic real human facial expressions in real time.
In addition to this strange ‘face only’ model, the company also makes several larger life-size robots.
These include the strange ‘Elf’ line of robots which feature pointed ears and the ability to interact with their surroundings, as well as a less advanced ‘Lan Series’ which are aimed to be more cost-effective.
Additionally, the company also creates creepy ‘1-1’ copies of real individuals using the same techniques.
The company says: ‘Our vision is to create humanoid robots that can seamlessly integrate into daily life, providing assistance, companionship, and support across various industries.
‘We believe that by developing realistic and expressive robot heads, we can bridge the gap between humans and machines.’
