Take a look at any future forward science fiction film, and you have robots that interact with humans in a manner where it seems as though those robots are sometimes more humans than well, us humans ourselves. That’s where the uncanny valley experience sets in, and perhaps what Professor Sawada has done with this Talking Robot this time around might just nudge us towards that day.
Professor Sawada who hails from Kawaga University in Japan recently demonstrated his talking robot at Robotech 2011, where it won’t just play back audio from a speaker, but rather, can mimic as well as reproduce natural human speech, now how about that? This is made possible due to the recreation of human organs including the lungs, trachea, vocal cords and tract.
It looks really creepy right now with just the mouth, although we are quite sure that the final product that has been incorporated into a full face would do the job just fine. What do you think of it?