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Engineered Arts Ltd.’s Robothespian is probably one of the first professional robotic actors who made it into the real world (sorry, T-1000). Its elegant movements, extraordinary body language and emotion-conveying skills make it a great communicator. It may not be capable of helping the elderly, it’s not nearly as agile and athletic as Boston Dynamics’ PETMAN, and it’s unlikely to be of any use during eye surgery. But that’s OK. Robothespian is an artist. A robot burdened with the task of exploring the ephemeral territory of the arts and claiming it for his robotic brethren. And it seems it is extremely well equipped to get the job done.

Thanks to LCD eyes that convey emotions and feelings to match what is being said, along with emotive LED lighting in its body shell, Robothespian has become proficient at the art of mesmerizing its audience. If you need a captivating story-teller, just hire a professional voice-over artist once and then leave Robothespian to deliver the same powerful act over and over again.

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Robot creator Masahiko Yamaguchi has demonstrated a robot which can balance, steer and correct itself while riding a fixed-gear bike.

“A feature of this robot is, it pedals the bike with its own feet, and keeps its balance just by using the handlebars. I think this is probably a world first.”

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It might be some time before one of these is bounding through the local park but a new ‘robo-dog’ could make life easier for blind people.

The robot was created by Japanese developer NSK, along with the University of Electro-Communications, and uses a Microsoft Kinect image and distance sensor to create a 3-D visualisation of obstacles ahead.

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