Humanoid robot Ameca leaves public 'gobsmacked'

A human-like robot invented and built in Cornwall, made its first interactions with the public at a festival on Tuesday.

Part of the Cornwall Festival of Tech, the sell out event 'Ameca: A Robot's Journey to Creation' saw about 250 participants attend Truro College to explore tech workshops, exhibits, and talks.

The robot has made several appearance at events across the world, but the festival in Cornwall was the first chance for the public to see it up close.

Some festival-goers said they were "gobsmacked" by its range of expressions while others found it "disconcerting."

Will Jackson, CEO of Falmouth based Engineered Arts, which created Ameca, said its facial expressions and gestures made it standout from other advanced humanoid robots.

Mr Jackson said his team had focused on how the robot communicates to help with its purpose as a platform for artificial intelligence development.

"The human face is one of the highest bandwidth communication tools, you can get a lot of information over," he said.

"You're nodding your head a little bit, you're making eye contact, your eyebrows raise a little bit, I can read a thousand words into every little gesture.

"If we can bring that kind of capability to a robot it would make our communication so much more human-like, so that's the idea."

Mr Jackson said Ameca had deliberately been designed not to look too realistic.

"You'll find the more it looks like people the more acceptable it becomes, up until a point where it gets very, very close.

"Then you get a big dip and people go 'I don't like that'.

"It's at that point that you've started to blur the line between what's human and what's robot."

One woman at the Cornwall Festival of Tech told BBC Spotlight that Ameca was "a little bit disconcerting" due to how its robotic facial muscles moved and how human-like its hands were.

A man at the festival said he was "gobsmacked" by the "amazing" robot and that he was impressed that it was made in Cornwall.

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