Two new robots (the type that can show their emotions, more or less) have recently been introduced according to an article by Kit Eaton titled Kid and Baby Robots Get Creepy Emotional Faces on Fast Company. From the article,

The two bots were revealed today by creators the JST Erato Asada Project–a research team dedicated to investigating how humans and robots can better relate to each other in the future and so that robots can learn better (though given the early stages of current artificial intelligence science, it’s almost a case of working out how humans can feel better about interacting with robots).

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The first is M3-Kindy, a 27-kilo machine with 42 motors and over a hundred touch-sensors. He’s about the size of a 5-year-old child, and can do speech recognition, and machine vision with his stereoscopic camera eyes. Kindy’s also designed to be led around by humans holding its hand, and can be taught to manipulate objects.

But it’s Kindy’s face that’s the freakiest bit. It’s been carefully designed so that it can portray emotions. That’ll undoubtedly be useful in the future, when, for instance, having more friendly, emotionally attractive robot carers look after elderly people and patients in hospitals is going to be important.

… Noby will have you running out of the room. It’s a similar human-machine interaction research droid, but is meant to model a 9-month-old baby, right down to the mass and density of its limbs and soft skin.

Do visit the article to see the images of the two robots and read more.