Meet ‘Adran’, A Humanoid That Grins & Winks Like A Real, Drunk Uncle At Parties
Video screenshot via Engineered Arts
No, that’s not a disembodied human head. That’s ‘Adran’ the humanoid robot, who has about the same expressive range as a person who’s had too many drinks.
Just as you thought UK robotics firm Engineered Arts had achieved the most humanlike facial expressions with its gender-neutral ‘Ameca’ bot, it’s also demonstrated an android with natural-looking skin and teeth. A recent video shows Adran in a motion test—it wakes up, stretches its facial muscles, then smiles at the camera and winks, before gingerly going back into a slumber.
Adran comes from a family of robots called ‘Mesmers’, and serves as a living example for Engineered Arts’ robot doubles that can be customized to look like human counterparts—down to skin texture, bone structure, and facial expressions. Adran is, in actual fact, modeled after real people via 3D in-house scans, which is why he might look so familiar or relatable to some.
The demonstrated iteration features 22 actuators, or movers (or muscles), located around its eyes, brows, nose, jaw, mouth, head, and neck to showcase a gamut of “emotions.” However, it will need even more actuators at the mouth area to produce “a really good lipsync,” Engineered Arts explains.
Video screenshot via Engineered Arts
Like its cousin Ameca, though, Adran is more like a chatbot trapped in a hyperrealistic body. It doesn’t have the same robot “brains” as the sophisticated Sophia the Robot; instead, humans can use it to interact with others. Adran runs on an operating system in the cloud, so owners can control it remotely.
After seeing the clip, Tesla CEO, SpaceX founder and 2021 Person of the Year Elon Musk only had four words to say: “Real androids are coming.”
Real androids are coming
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2021
[via Republic World and RT, video and images via Engineered Arts]
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