Robotic cell phones express emotions

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Yim, a doctoral student, and Shaw, an associate professor, first used cell phone technology to create Cally, a physically active robotic cell
phone that stands roughly 16 centimeters high. She walks, dances and
mimics human gestures. She can also help cell phone users make
electronic eye contact with the person to whom they are talking by
tracking human faces.

The SIAT researchers have most recently used wireless networking, text messaging and other interactive technologies to give birth to Callo. He is taller (almost 23
centimeters) and more emotionally sophisticated than his older sister.

Callo’s viewing screen registers text-messaged emoticons as
human-like facial expressions. His robotic shoulders
can slump and his arms can start waving frantically if he’s
interactively triggered to respond to an emotional crisis, such as
relationship break up.

“Imagine you are video-calling with me through Callo,” explains Yim. “When you move your robot, my robot will move the same, and vice versa,
so that we can share emotional feelings using ‘physically smart’ robot
phones.”

Shaw, Yim’s doctoral supervisor, says the two are developing a wide
range of human-robot cell phone service scenarios and
prototypes of Cally, Callo and their siblings. He adds, “We’re using
them to explore ways in which we can help social robotic products, such
as GPS, interactively communicate with people and build long-term
intimacy with them.”

Source : http://www.physorg.com/news192214085.html