The realism of robotic facial features is growing at an exponential pace. Huff Post Science has reported on a very “interesting” way to control an android’s face.
Researchers at the University of the West of England in Bristol programmed the robotic face, in the video below, to respond to electrical signals produced by slime mold, which is a fungus- like organism that resembles spongy, yellow blobs.
How Does This Work?
When the mold moves toward food, the bot registers a positive expression and when it recoils from light, the robotic face looks downcast.
The university’s Dr. Ella Gale, a research associate in unconventional computing, placed the mold in a small dish on a bed of 64 electrodes to create the robot-mold interface. The electrodes pick up tiny signals from the mold and route them to the robot to produce facial expressions.
Watch the video below to get a better feel of how mold controls the Robotic “mind”.
Click here to view the embedded video.
This week’s MM looks at some new research about Online Consensus that was published in the journal Science and was forwarded to me by Paul Jones from Magneto Communications – thanks Paul!