Japanese robot likes sushi, fears president (bush)

[The Straight Story]

Japanese robot likes sushi, fears president

TOKYO - Kansei frowns when he hears the word "bomb", smiles at "sushi" and looks scared and disgusted when someone says "president" - and he isn't even human.

Japan's latest robot, called Kansei and created by a university research team, can pull up to 36 different facial expressions based on a program which creates word associations from a self-updating online database of 500,000 keywords.

The English keywords then trigger the most appropriate facial expression, which ranges from happiness to sadness, anger and fear.

"What we are trying to do here is to create a flow of consciousness in robots so that they can make the relevant facial expressions," said project leader Junichi Takeno, a professor at Meiji University's School of Science and Technology.
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"I believe that's going to be a key to improving communication between humans and robots," he said.

The robot has 19 movable parts underneath the silicone face mask. When he hears the word "president", the online database picks up associated words such as "Bush," "war" and "Iraq" and creates an expression which mixes fear and disgust.

http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=53627

Even robots hate him :)