KIST’s Center for Intelligent Robotics know that to remain stagnant is actually to fall backwards in terms of development and advancement of knowledge, which is why the organization has been hard at work at what they do best – that is, working on ever new robots that might one day serve humankind without complaining, picketing in front of the company office, play the favoritism game, and heck – will work for free, more or less. Until that day in the far away future comes though, we will have to be content with dumbed down bots. Still, there is progress in the form of this particular robotic head.
Hailing from the very same labs that showed off Kibo 2.0 at Robot World 2011, this robotic head is not some body-less persona that intends to take over the world, but rather, has a softer side to it by being the next evolutionary step of the FR-i, a robotic head who gives English lessons to elementary students as part of the South Korean government’s R-Learning initiative.
Unfortunately, some people think that there is not much social interaction going on with this particular robot head, playing back some rather sad expressions and movements which would fool no human into thinking that they’ve taken yet another step closer into the Uncanny Valley. Perhaps the next outing would be better?