So human, frightening. This robot perfectly imitates our gestures and facial expressions

Projekt Ameca is not the first attempt to create a humanoid robot. We can mention here, for example, the android presented a few years ago BINA48, created as part of the Lifenaut or Sofia project – the first robot to be granted citizenship. This was done in 2017 by Saudi Arabia.

Laboratory engineers Engineered Arts however, it succeeded in something that their predecessors could not cope with – they dressed their robot in human emotions. Ameca naturally reproduces our facial expressions, and a sample of its possibilities can be seen in the video below.

The way Ameca shows her surprise is especially impressive. Fluent gestures are also surprising. In the video, we see the robot looking curiously at its hands and then looking into the camera lens, which is both intriguing and slightly scary.

Of course, the project is still far from complete. It is a prototype that will be developed over the years. Unlike the Boston Dynamics robots, for example, Ameca cannot move because the lower part of the robot is inactive. The creators emphasize, however, that this is not a priority for them. They want to continue to focus on expanding the catalog of emotions shown by Ameca.

The valley of weirdness

If after watching the video with Ameca in the lead role you feel a certain anxiety, then it’s completely natural. Already in the 1970s, scientists discovered the phenomenon of uncanny valley. It consists in feeling an instinctive fear of inanimate beings who remind us too much of a human being.

The valley of weirdness is the gulf between the similarity and the difference. You expect a human and you get something completely different. It is not clear what the valley of weirdness results from: whether its source is a biological disgust towards the unknown, or a disgust towards the inanimate structure that imitates life

-, Dr. Aleksandra Przegalińska, philosopher, futurologist and researcher of the development of new technologies.