The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot

The first head Hanson built for Bar-Cohen–Andy-roid–is, frankly, a rudimentary prototype. A mere four servos allow it to make just a handful of rather unconvincing expressions. Once he finished with that model, though, Hanson plunged heedlessly into a pursuit of robotic verisimilitude way beyond anything ever attempted. He pored over Gray's Anatomy and clicked obsessively through medical Web sites, noting the major human facial muscles, from the occipitofrontalis, which elevates the eyebrow and wrinkles the forehead, to the depressor anguli oris, which pulls the corners of the mouth down into a frown. He took in the pioneering work of psychologist Paul Ekman, who has classified thousands of facial expressions, specifying which combinations of individual facial muscles move in what manner to create each one; he pondered the mechanics of how specific muscles and tendons and ligaments work together to move portions of the face. He studied the facial form, composition, proportions and contours of everyone he knew; he spent hours in front of the mirror making faces.


He then experimented with plastic molds and materials, fitting the head from the inside with 24 servomotors, two microprocessors, anchors and nylon fishing line to tug on the skin. Then he wired the head and programmed the software to control it.


It was tough going. To get accurate, believable expressions, Hanson fiddled endlessly with the placement of the servomotors and the lines that tug the skin. The urethane skin of his early prototype heads was too stiff and heavy for the servomotors to move, and so he had invented a new polymer, which he dubbed F'rubber (foam + rubber x Fred MacMurray). Now, he and Nelson worked to perfect the F'rubber formula, mixing 970 combinations of ingredients in the bathroom of the apartment they'd moved into in Hollywood, until they found one polymer that was elastic and flexible and remarkably stable. A month before K-Bot's February debut, Hanson spent three to four hours a day for a week in a local hardware store, piecing together brass plumbing parts to make a movable neck for the robot. Clerks asked him repeatedly if he was all right. Ultimately, Hanson built K-Bot with $400 in parts from hobby, crafts and hardware stores, paid for by his student loans.


As Hanson's work progressed, it became ever more clear that making lifelike robot heads meant more than building a convincing surface and creating realistic facial expressions. So late last year he began to consider K-Bot's brain. The Internet led him to a Los Angeles company, Eyematic, which makes state-of-the-art computer-vision software that recognizes human faces and expressions. Hanson sought out co-founder and chief technology officer Hartmut Neven, who gave him a beta version of the software. Then, through a mutual acquaintance Hanson had met at a scientific conference, he approached Jochen Triesch, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was using robot heads to test theories about the mental processes underlying vision and rudimentary social skills. Also at UCSD was Javier Movellan, who was working on technologies that would allow a social robot to tutor schoolchildren. Hanson began commuting regularly to UCSD from Hollywood, three hours each way by train.