Chinese inventors' unveils Jia Jia, China's first interactive human-like 'robot goddess'
A group of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has officially launched the new interactive robot named Jia Jia in Hefei, the capital of east China's Anhui Province.
According to the local media, USTC's Chen Xiaoping along with his colleagues is said to be the brain of the life-like cyborg. Dubbed as "robot goddess," the humanoid is modified to perceive human and machines interaction, boasting a cloud-based technology system to store memories.
"Hello everyone, I'm Jia Jia. Welcome!," Xinhuanet quoted the robot as saying to the audience at the university's multimedia center.
As the team took three years to complete the said robot goddess, it has been learned that Jia Jia is developed with human-like capabilities. The humanoid is said to be equipped for interacting with real humans nearby, and additionally, make some micro facial expressions.
Another interesting feature includes her ability to recognize when somebody is taking a picture and make suitable remarks, saying, "Don't come too close to me when you are taking a picture. It will make my face look fat."
The same group of researchers was seemingly the brains behind the service robot named Keija, who took home the first place at the RoboCup championship in 2014. Compared to its previous interactive robots, Jia Jia has a natural eye movement and its speech is said to be in a state of harmony with its lip movement.
However, other than the mentioned facial expressions and talking, Jia Jia's abilities are constrained considering that her hand movements and emotional responses have yet to be implemented. Hence, the researchers hope to keep developing Jia Jia with goals of giving her a deep learning capability that would make her turn into an astute robot goddess in the future.
"We will add facial expression recognition and make it interact more deeply with people," said team director Xiaoping.
Although there is no word yet on what the robot goddess' main purpose will be, the researchers already made it clear that the humanoid is just a robotics research project and that it would not be massed produced despite its enthralling features, Daily Mail has learned.
Nonetheless, the robot goddess, Jia Jia, has been reported to be featured in the upcoming International Technology Fair in Shanghai, which will kick off with a three-day event from April 21 to 23.
