Hanson Robotics

Last updated
Hanson Robotics Limited
Company type Private
Industry
  • Engineering
  • Robotics
Founded2007;17 years ago (2007) in Dallas, Texas, United States
Founder David Hanson
Headquarters Science Park, Hong Kong [1]
Key people
Products
Website hansonrobotics.com

Hanson Robotics Limited is a Hong Kong-based engineering and robotics company founded by David Hanson, known for its development of human-like robots with artificial intelligence (AI) for consumer, entertainment, service, healthcare, and research applications. The robots include Albert HUBO, the first walking robot with human-like expressions; BINA48, an interactive humanoid robot bust; and Sophia, the world's first robot citizen. The company has 45 employees. [3]

Contents

Hanson Robotics’ robots feature a patented spongy elastomer skin called Frubber that resembles human skin in its feel and flexibility. [4] Underneath the Frubber are proprietary motor control systems by which the robots mimic human expressions. [5]

History

In 2013, the company moved from Texas to Hong Kong Science Park [6] and planned to develop a robotics hub in Hong Kong. [7] [8]

In October 2016, the company was selected as one of nine companies to join the Disney Accelerator program. [9]

Humanoid robots

The company has focused on building robots that mimic the look of humans.

Sophia

Sophia is Hanson Robotics’ most well-known robot, is regularly featured in news outlets, and receives a great deal of public interest. The company's latest creation made her debut at the 2016 South by Southwest (SXSW) show, with her interview by CNBC reaching a broad audience. [10] Since then, she has become a global media personality, having conducted numerous press interviews and appeared on broadcast television shows including CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, [11] the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, [12] and Good Morning Britain. [13] She has also been a keynote and panel speaker at global conferences and events, [14] [15] including those hosted by ITU, [16] United Nations. [17]

Sophia was featured in AUDI's annual report [18] and has graced the cover and centerfold of ELLE Magazine. [19] Sophia is also the first United Nations Development Programme's first ever Innovation Champion, and the first non-human to be given any UN title. [20] In 2018, Sophia won an Edison Award for Innovation in that competition's robotics category. [21]

Alice

Alice was developed in 2008 for MIRA Labs in Geneva, Switzerland. [22] The female robot has an emotionally expressive face. She acts to serve cognitive robotics research at the University of Geneva and is part of the INDIGO cognitive robotics consortium, [23] where Hanson Robotics is a founding member.

Albert Einstein HUBO

Albert Einstein HUBO was, [24] developed in November 2005 in collaboration with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) HUBO group of Korea. Inspired by German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, the expressive walking humanoid featured Einstein's head on a HUBO robot body. KAIST built the walking body, and Hanson Robotics built the animatronic head and the face, which uses elastic polymer called Frubber. [25]

The robot debuted at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in November 2005. [26] Albert Einstein HUBO can perform realistic facial expressions and mimic Albert Einstein's voice via a voice synthesizer. [27] The robot is currently at the University of California, San Diego at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

BINA48

BINA48 (Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture 48) is a humanoid robot who has a bust-like head and shoulders mounted on a frame, and can produce realistic facial appearance from 30 motors beneath her Frubber skin. [28] She was released by Hanson in 2010. She is described as a “technological sketch” of a human being, commissioned by millionaire Martine Rothblatt to mimic the appearance of her spouse of over 35 years, Bina Rothblatt. [29]

BINA48 includes a database with dozens of books which she is able to recite. [30] BINA48 is currently stationed at the non-profit Terasem Movement Foundation, Inc.

Han

Han debuted in 2015 at the Global Sources electronics fair in Hong Kong. The robot was designed to identify and replicate human expressions. He is able to detect people using an array of cameras and speech recognition technology, decipher their gender, age, and facial indications of emotion (i.e. happy or sad), and as such, Hanson Robotics has suggested the robot could be of use in hotels or customer service positions. [31] Han is bald with masculine features. He possesses a British accent, and specializes in making humorous facial expressions.

Jules

Jules debuted in 2006 at Wired Nextfest. Jules is a robot that has machine learning capabilities, face tracking, and facial recognition. [32] His software was development by Hanson Robotics in collaboration with the Personality Forge AI Chatbot Platform, with Personality Forge founder and developer, Benji Adams, and AI developer Heather McKeen. Jules is described as having a "statistically perfect androgynous face". [33] The robot currently resides at the University of West England in Bristol.

Professor Einstein

Professor Einstein is Hanson Robotics’ first personal robot available to consumers. The robot was developed in 2016 and was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2017. [34] The robot first became available for purchase to consumers in January 2017 after launching on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, and later became available on Amazon and at other popular retailers across the United States.

Professor Einstein is marketed as an educational tool to teach science, primarily to children ages 8–13. [35] The robot can speak about science, tell jokes, and connect to Wifi to check the weather or access information on the internet. It has a corresponding app called the Stein-O-Matic that offers games, videos, and lessons. [36] Motors allow it to walk, make different facial expressions, and an on-chest camera tracks faces. [37]

Philip K. Dick Android

The Hanson Robotics Philip K. Dick Android, in 2019 2019 - Press conferences - Day 2 061119SMcC0008 (49024444378).jpg
The Hanson Robotics Philip K. Dick Android, in 2019

Philip K. Dick Android was shown publicly for the first time in 2005 at Wired Nextfest. [38] He was designed as an android portrait of the American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and was programmed to contain thousands of pages of the writings of the author, including journals and letters, into a Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) corpus and conversational system construct android. [39]

In 2005, Hanson and team received an AAAI award for their "intelligent conversational portrait" of Philip K. Dick. [40] In 2005, the original robot was lost on a plane headed for San Francisco and was never found. [41]

In 2011, in collaboration with Dutch public broadcaster VPRO, Hanson Robotics developed and introduced a new version of the android. [42] The android bust uses 36 servomotors to create facial expressions and has motion-tracking machine vision . [43] Philip K. Dick Android is currently dedicated to research with the nonprofit Apollo Mind Initiative. [44]

Zeno

Zeno debuted in 2007 at Wired Nextfest. The robot could see, hear, and talk. Zeno featured more than 28 specialized motors, an agile body, and expressive face. Named for creator David Hanson's son Zeno and designed as a nod to Astro Boy, [45] In 2012, an updated version of Zeno was released, which included Dynamixel RX-28 and RX-64 servos, plus a sensor suite comprising a gyro, accelerometer, compass, torque sensors, touch sensors, and temperature sensors, as well as more cartoon-like features. [46]

Joey Chaos

Joey Chaos was unveiled by Hanson Robotics at the 2007 RoboBusiness Conference and Expo in Boston, MA. [47] The robot was created to study human-robot interaction [48] and has camera eyes to track human faces and speech recognition software. [49]

Criticism

Hanson Robotics' humanoid robotics have been criticized by leading AI researchers. For example, Facebook's Yann LeCun has called Sophia a "puppet" and questioned the value of Sophia and similar robots, as well as the presentation of these robots as far more intelligent than what they truly are. [50] Sophia being given citizenship in Saudi Arabia was further criticized, not only because of Sophia's lack of consciousness, but the difficulty of people achieving citizenship in that country despite actually living and working there for years . [51]

Awards

Affiliations

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Android (robot)</span> Robot resembling a human

An android is a humanoid robot or other artificial being often made from a flesh-like material. Historically, androids were completely within the domain of science fiction and frequently seen in film and television, but advances in robot technology now allow the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots.

<i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i> 1968 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a 1968 dystopian science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth's life has been greatly damaged by a nuclear global war, leaving most animal species endangered or extinct. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who has to "retire" six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids.

An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control. The first autonomous robots environment were known as Elmer and Elsie, which were constructed in the late 1940s by W. Grey Walter. They were the first robots in history that were programmed to "think" the way biological brains do and meant to have free will. Elmer and Elsie were often labeled as tortoises because of how they were shaped and the manner in which they moved. They were capable of phototaxis which is the movement that occurs in response to light stimulus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humanoid robot</span> Body shape similar to a human

A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion, or for other purposes. In general, humanoid robots have a torso, a head, two arms, and two legs, though some humanoid robots may replicate only part of the body, for example, from the waist up. Some humanoid robots also have heads designed to replicate human facial features such as eyes and mouths. Androids are humanoid robots built to aesthetically resemble humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gynoid</span> Robot resembling a woman

A gynoid, or fembot, is a feminine humanoid robot. Gynoids appear widely in science fiction film and art. As more realistic humanoid robot design becomes technologically possible, they are also emerging in real-life robot design. Just like any other robot, the main parts of a Gynoid include sensors, actuators and a control system. Sensors are responsible for detecting the changes in the environment while the actuators, also called effectors, are motors and other components responsible for the movement and control of the robot. The control system instructs the robot on what to do so as to achieve the desired results.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uncanny valley</span> Hypothesis that human replicas elicit revulsion

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">HUBO</span> South Korean humanoid robot

HUBO is a walking humanoid robot, head mounted on a life-size walking bipedal frame, developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and released on January 6, 2005. According to Hubo's creator Prof Jun-Ho Oh and his Plenary Session at ICRA 2012 entitled Development Outline of the Humanoid Robot: HUBO II the name Hubo is simply a name, not an abbreviation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Hanson (robotics designer)</span> American roboticist

David Hanson Jr. is an American roboticist who is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hanson Robotics, a Hong Kong-based robotics company founded in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actroid</span> Type of android

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert HUBO</span> Humanoid robot

Albert HUBO is a humanoid robot, based on the HUBO, but with an animatronic head in the likeness of Albert Einstein. Introduced in 2005, Albert HUBO is the world's first walking humanoid robot with an android head. It was developed by Joon-Ho Oh of KAIST in conjunction with Hanson Robotics, who developed the head. Albert HUBO served as the ambassador of "DYNAMIC KOREA", an initiative by the government of South Korea to rebrand and promote its technology internationally. Albert HUBO is capable of making many facial expressions and interacting with people.

EveR is a series of female androids developed by a team of South Korean scientists from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology in Korea University of Science and Technology. The project is headed by Baek Moon-hong and was unveiled to the public at the Kyoyuk MunHwa HoeKwan hotel in Seoul on May 4, 2003. The EveR name is derived from the combination of the Biblical "Eve" and the r from robot.

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The Ibn Sina Robot is the world's first android robot with Arabic language conversational abilities. Created by roboticists Nikolaos Mavridis and Hanson Robotics founder David Hanson at United Arab Emirates University's Interactive Robots and Media Lab, The robot is capable of facial expressions, hand gestures, Arabic language dialogue, face detection and face recognition. It is part of an Interactive Theatre installation, within a circular room with a diameter of 13 meters, containing a stage, a projection screen, and sensors. Experimentation regarding multiple forms of tele-participation in the theatre is taking place; such as live interactions between physically present robots and humans with avatars in online virtual worlds, and remote control of robots through brain-computer interfacing.

BINA48 is a robotic face combined with chatbot functionalities, enabling simple conversation facilities. BINA48 is owned by Martine Rothblatt's Terasem Movement. It was developed by Hanson Robotics and released in 2010. Its physical appearance is modeled after Bina Aspen, Rothblatt's wife.

Frubber is a patented elastic form of rubber used in robotics. The spongy elastomer has been used by Hanson Robotics for the face of its android robots, including Einstein 3 and Sophia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophia (robot)</span> Social humanoid robot

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