Robots are already disturbingly capable on a physical plane. They’re able to run, jump and flip better than the vast majority of humans. The major thing keeping them from being seriously creepy was that they don’t really look like us. You’ll notice that last sentence is in the past tense.
Meet Ameca. Ameca is the robot that’ll haunt your nightmares this evening. Not because it’s utterly alien, but because of how alien it isn’t. Well, at least, not totally alien.
What a robot uprising looks like
Ameca is a humanoid robot that, currently, looks to have the most advanced facial features ever seen on an artificial being. You don’t have to take Stuff‘s word for it. Just watch the video above and you’ll be… fairly convinced.
The ‘bot cycles through a quick series of human emotions, augmented by some realistic hand movements. Comparisons between Ameca and Sonny, a sentient robot from 2004’s I, Robot, are immediately obvious. The company that makes Ameca also makes the RoboThespian — not the one from Futurama — and Mesmer. All of them attempt to mimic humans in one way or another.
But Ameca, the newest of these, is also the most realistic. Its creators, Engineered Arts, aren’t going too deep into the tech behind it just yet, but they will early next year at CES 2022. The robot is considered a development platform and is powered by the company’s Tritium software. It’s also a foray into the world of artificial bodies, which Engineered Arts plans to fill with artificial intelligence. There’s no possible way this could go wrong. Right?