Photo in the News: Ultra-Lifelike Robot Debuts in Japan via Warren Ellis and others
What gets me is that it's always been the attention to detail that makes any replication of something that much more life-like. But it's rarely applied to robotics until now.
Repliee Q1 (at left in both pictures) appeared yesterday at the 2005 World Expo in Japan, where she gestured, blinked, spoke, and even appeared to breathe.... [Q1] has 31 points of articulation in its upper body... Internal sensors allow the android to react "naturally."... But it's the little, "unconscious" movements that give the robot its eerie verisimilitude: the slight flutter of the eyelids, the subtle rising and falling of the chest, the constant, nearly imperceptible shifting so familiar to humans.