Gazing into the eyes of SEER: The Simulative Emotional Expression Robot

This young looking face with light eyes, expressive eyebrows, and a Mona Lisa smile is named SEER, an acronym for Simulative Emotional Expression Robot. It was created by Japanese artist Takayuki Todo to explore the power of eye contact and human facial expressions in technology. Todo explains:

The purpose of my research and development is not to answer the philosophical theme “Will a robot (or computer) obtain a mind or emotions like mankind”, but to portray the sense of conscious emotion such as a human can produce. I think it is possible to represent human-like communications by constructing an adequate interaction system between facial sensing and expressions.

If we understand and identify with robots which can learn the functions and usages of emotional expressions from interactions with people, get a good command of them accordingly with situations and context, could we distinguish them from the existence of those with real minds and emotions?

SEER has two modes: One that maintains eye contact with the viewer, as if it “has its own intentions,” and one that imitates the viewer. The video below is an example of how SEER can mirror facial expressions in real-time:

From July 2018: Disney Imagineering’s autonomous robot stunt doubles.
From January 2014: Anthropomorphism in Robots.
And from the 1770s: The Writer, automata by Pierre Jaquet-Droz.

h/t Laughing Squid.