Emo

“With its hairless silicone skin and blue complexion, Emo the robot looks more like a mechanical re-creation of the Blue Man Group than a regular human. Until it smiles.

In a study published March 27 in Science Robotics, researchers detail how they trained Emo to smile in sync with humans. Emo can predict a human smile 839 milliseconds before it happens and smile back.

Right now, in most humanoid robots, there’s a noticeable delay before they can smile back at a person, often because the robots are imitating a person’s face in real time. ‘I think a lot of people actually interacting with a social robot for the first time are disappointed by how limited it is,’ says Chaona Chen, a human-robot interaction researcher at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. ‘Improving robots’ expression in real time is important.'”

This robot can tell when you’re about to smile — and smile back via Science News.

Art featured: Gustave Courbet, The Desperate Man, 1843–45. Image via Wikimedia Commons