Tuesday, September 18, 2007

"Face-morphing robot can look like anyone":
The WD-2 robot is a pretty amazing piece of technology. It can't walk, talk, compute awesomely complex equations, or carry heavy objects. What it can do, however, is morph to look like anyone's face. Created by researchers at Tokyo University, the WD-2 has "17 facial points, for a total of 56 degrees of freedom," whatever that means.

Made from a material called Septom, which is both very rigid as well as malleable, it's able to shift to match nearly any facial structure. It's certainly a creepy idea, one that I can't quite see the practical benefits of. It's also incredible to watch doing its thing, as a realistic face seems to morph on the fly into another, completely different realistic face.
More information here.