Japanese Robot Makes Facial Expressions

A professor and a team of researchers at the Meiji University's Robot and Science Institute have created a robot that is able to make up to 36 kinds of facial expressions after typing a word in its software.

His name is Kansei…sensibility. 

The robot extracts word associations from a data base of 500,000 words and calculates the level of pleasantness or not and then prompts the robot to make facial expressions.

What is amazing is that the Japanese are known for NOT showing any emotion in their faces…

Is he happy? Dunno.

Is he sad? Dunno.

How about angry, irritated, frustrated, excited, eager? Dunno, dunno, dunno…

The Japanese pride themselves on understanding what the other party is thinking withOUT words and facial expressions….though in my opinion they often get it wrong…but get it right, too, more often than I care to admit.

"How'd he know what I was thinking? Didn't he hear what I said?" is common.

This particular robot looks a bit like a girl I dated in Japan. And I have seen that expression on her face when we….and she wasn't happy.

I wonder what expression the humanoid would make if it heard, "Boy, I'd kill to get to know her. She's a real knockout."

And, by the way, why would anybody want to know what the humanoid was 'feeling'? You got me on that.