The  HRP-4C Humanoid  robot was developed by The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) of Japan and Kawada Industries. As you can see above, this robot can put on quite the show! Created mainly for entertainment purposes, this robot has even hit fashion runways! Actroid- DER3, developed by Osaka University and the robotics company Kokoro, is also being used for similar purposes.

Another pretty face below- the mask bot which uses a simple projection of a real human face to achieve its life-like appearance, was developed by AIST and  the Institute of Cognitive Systems (ICS) at the Technische University in Munich .

Some humanoids can even play music! Check out a robot released by Toyota back in  2007 that can play the violin.

A joint project between the MIT Media Lab and Drexel University put on this performance using 4 HUBO robots which were developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Many robots are developed for use as research platforms. Nao, developed by Aldebaran is currently being used in all sorts of research at elementary schools, hospitals and universities around the world.

MIT Media Lab’s Nexi is giving researchers insight into human-robot interaction. While it couldn’t pass for a human, the robot does manage to display rather convincing facial expressions.

CB2 is another robot developed by Osaka University. Similarly to the iCub (developed by the European RobotCub consortium), it expresses child-like behaviours and learning abilities to help researchers study human cognitive development.

Of course there are plenty more humanoids out there! What’s your favourite android?

At first glance it’s a generic plastic mask fixed in front of a projector. Switch it on and you’re looking at the most realistic ¨talking head¨ yet. Researchers from the Institute of Cognitive Systems (ICS) at the Technische University in Munich have collaborated with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan (AIST) to create a life-sized talking head, the Mask-bot.

While talking heads already exist, this one is the first to project a 3D image of a human face on a plastic mask, making it appear more realistic than previous 3D heads that display cartoon-like faces. However, Mask-bot’s more than just a pretty face, it’s a rather articulate artifact- when one of the Mask-bot’s creators,  Dr. Takaaki Kuratate, says the word ¨rainbow¨ Mask-bot responds with a concrete explanation of the phenomenon “When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow”. Via computer control, the Mask-bot is capable of speech and highly realistic facial movements.

Mask-bot can readily be applied in a variety of settings including events like video conferences. It is also a powerful text to speech converter, able to reproduce content typed via keyboard – in English, Japanese and soon German. Above and beyond these applications, its creators hope that Mask-bot will serve as a platform to help further investigate human-robot interaction.

Profesor Gordon Cheng, chair of ICS at the Technische University, is a robotocist that is highly involved in this type of research. He is also a current consortium member of Robot Companions for Citizens, a European initiative that aims to develop and safely deploy robots to assist us in our daily living. Due to the fact that robots are becoming increasingly present in societies around the world, robotocists who are conscientious about their work believe it’s critical to assess all aspects of human-robot interaction.