WTH! NEW ROBOT MAKES FACIAL EXPRESSIONS TO LET YOU KNOW HOW SHE FEELS!

Wiping that smile off her face may be as easy as hitting the "delete" key.

Now scientists from the University of Pisa have taken emotion display in robots a step further - a robot called FACE (Facial Automation for Conveying Emotions) can emulate human expressions with uncanny accuracy. FACE emulates six basic emotional states: happiness, sadness, disgust, amazement, indifference and fear. It can also recreate expressions in between these emotions, such as happiness with a hint of amazement.

Using software that was 30 years in development - HEFES (Hybrid Engine for Facial Expressions Synthesis) - the scientists are now able to actually send 'emotion' commands that drive the robot's 32 facial motors. And it works pretty well. The New Scientist reports that a group of five autistic and 15 non-autistic children were asked to identify the robot's various emotions. Fear, disgust and surprise were more difficult to decipher than happiness, sadness or anger.

The project's leader, Ph.D. student Nicole Lazzeri, modeled the robot on one team member's wife. The roboticists admit that it is "very realistic," reports the Daily Mail.

Despite being "very realistic," you can still tell that FACE is a robot, advise researchers. Whenever we see a robot, we usually end up in the "uncanny valley," a field of robotics and animation in which human replicas can almost be mistaken for real humans, but not quite. This often sparks revulsion in the observer.

But this undertaking demonstrates that roboticists might be closer to surpassing the uncanny valley with a completely convincing human likeness. So face it, someday that inscrutable look you are trying to figure out may not be on the face of another person, but on a machine with a FACE all its own.

THAT'S WHAT YOU CALL A BOT B!TCH

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