Erica the talking robot

A professor at the Osaka University has created a new, extremely realistic talking robot named Erica. Despite the fact that he has delivered creepily real androids in the past years, Erica isn’t as bad.

This time the focus on the professor’s work isn’t just on amazing your eyes, but your ears as well! Erica has been given improved speech and communication body language, getting rid of the average effect of simply speaking to a robot.

Earlier this month, Erica’s amazing communication skills were shown off at Japan’s Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. The talking robot is able to answer questions like “what are your hobbies?” in a more natural way than any other robots created.

Additionally, Erica’s non-verbal actions, including blinks, emotive facial movements and head leaning, all seemed to enhance the robot’s style of communication.

The professor who created Erica, who is also famously known as the man who made a copy of himself as a robot, claims that Erica can also recognize speech patterns and non-verbal cues of the person she is speaking with.

While Erica is certainly not perfect yet, she is the closest thing ever seen to a robot impersonating a human. Some claim that robots will be used to impersonate people without their permission, some say that technology is nowhere near that point yet.

With robots like Pepper and Buddy, who are already joining families and replacing receptionists, it seems like it is only a matter of time before robots like Erica could be greeting office visitors.

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