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No, this isn’t a teaser for the upcoming horror movie Smile 2. In fact, it might be a whole lot scarier.
One of the biggest flaws, or maybe blessings, of humanoid robots is they have an uncanny valley “tell” which usually involves their face. Whether it’s their unnatural eye movement or unrealistic silicone face coverings, they just don’t feel “right.” So it’s a relief that we, as real humans, have a failsafe in our brains that warns us of imposters. But that innate skepticism might get a little harder to access in the future as scientists continue to try and make robots “passable.”
One Japanese company is a step closer to tricking humans into suspending their disbelief as they have developed a living skin mask to use on robotic heads that give them a more human characteristic, especially when they smile.
According to the Associated Press (AP), researchers have been working on this technology and it’s been very successful.
“In this study, we managed to replicate human appearance to some extent by creating a face with the same surface material and structure as humans,” Professor Shoji Takeuchi, the team leader, said in a news release. He added, “We identified new challenges, such as the necessity for surface wrinkles and a thicker epidermis to achieve a more humanlike appearance.”
From our basic knowledge of the process and the help of AP, the way they do it is to apply, “a layer of collagen gel containing cultured human dermal fibroblasts (a type of connective tissue cell) [that] binds to an innovative system of tiny V-shaped perforations in the surface, letting the skin move with the underlying structure without tearing or peeling.”
In other words, smoother, less jarring facial expressions motivated by servos and actuators.
This same Japanese company called Biohybrid Systems Laboratory has developed such things as individual self-healing skin, small robots with biological muscle tissue, and, erm, 3D-printed lab-grown meat.
All of these innovations seem like breakthroughs for human medicine and biology, but Takeuchi’s team seems more interested in engineering them for artificial intelligence, helping robots look and move more like humans do.
This brings us to ask a few questions, like, why do we need robots to look and act like humans? Why can’t they look and act like robots?