David Hanson goes to the University of California, San Diego, to study cognitive science, to UCLA for sculpture, and his home institution of the University of Texas, Dallas, for computer graphics and engineering. But the 33-year-old graduate student's most important trip may have been to a neighborhood bar, where he met and measured the model for K-Bot.
David Hanson and friend.
CREDIT: THE DENVER POST
Scientists say K-Bot, named for Hanson's friend Kristen Nelson, is one of the most realistic human facial robots ever made. It consists of a head and 24 mechanical muscles encased in a new lifelike urethane polymer called f'rubber, with video cameras in its eyes to watch who's watching it. At this month's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a lipsticked, eyelinered K-Bot by turn smiled and scowled at reporters in sync with commands from Hanson's laptop computer.
"I aspire to the ideal of a Renaissance man," says Hanson, who has worked on entertainment robots for the Walt Disney Co. He plans to add artificial intelligence to K-Bot's successors, creating a new medium: sculpture that responds appropriately to a viewer. He hopes its ability to respond to nonverbal cues will be useful to cognitive science researchers, and perhaps also to therapists working with autistic children. And his ultimate goal? "A compassionate, sociable robot," he says, "that will one day become our peer."
