[imagesource: Engineered Arts]

Robot technology is advancing at a frightening speed.

At least we are still saying that and not “robots are so advanced now that human civilisation is at stake” or something along those lines.

At this stage, the robots are still just cleaning, dancing, and looking like fools.

Unless you consider some self-reproducing African clawed frog cell blobs as robots capable of taking over the world, then we still have a good amount of time as mere mortals on this planet.

Elon Musk is still in the planning stages of creating the ultimate humanoid robot, but Engineered Arts, a UK-based designer and manufacturer of humanoid robots, has gone and done it.

They call it Ameca, and its impressive range of human-like facial expressions makes it feel like it is becoming self-aware as we watch it.

The company shared a video of it “waking up” on YouTube. We get to see Ameca go from confusion to frustration to pure amazement as it looks at its hands:

Thankfully, we are not yet at panic stations per The Verge:

That said, we likely won’t see Ameca walking and talking among us anytime soon. Engineered Arts says the bot is currently unable to walk, although it wants to give it that ability at some point.

As for whether Ameca operates using AI [artificial intelligence], Engineered Arts explains that it leaves AI capabilities up to developers — it just handles the ultra-realistic bodies.

Engineered Arts uses 3D scans of actual humans to make the bots seem as real as possible.

If Ameca is not unsettling enough, the company also has another bot called Mesmer.

This robot has a far more accurate bone structure, skin texture, and lifelike facial expressions:

It is just a head, but I don’t trust it.

[source:verge]