At the Meiji University lab in a Tokyo suburb, engineering students are wiring a rubbery robot face to simulate six basic expressions: anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and disgust.
Hooked up to a database of words clustered by association, the robot Kansei (sensibility) responds to ¡°war¡± by quivering in what looks like disgust and fear. It hears ¡°love¡± and it smiles.
¡°To live among people, robots need to handle complex social tasks,¡± said project leader Junichi Takeno. ¡°Robots will need to work with emotions, to understand and eventually feel them.¡±
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