A robot toddler is getting an extreme makeover to make it even more like a real child (see video above). Called iCub, it has been built to road-test theories about how flesh-and-blood children think, learn and develop.
Designed by a consortium of European universities, the iCub is modelled on a 2-year-old. But its hands are currently the size of an 8-year-old鈥檚 because it was too hard to make fully functional mechanical hands any smaller.
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鈥淲e now have a hand that looks like that of an 18-month-old child,鈥� says , an engineer at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa. 鈥淚t鈥檚 got almost all the motion we have in the human hand.鈥�
The robot is also to get a new pair of legs. They are lighter and springier to make them robust enough to handle the bumps and scrapes that real children shrug off but that can all too easily damage a robot, whose gearbox and motor-packed joints can鈥檛 flex to reduce the force of an impact.
That design tweak will also make the robot safer for any humans around, something that engineers are increasingly thinking about as robots become advanced enough to mingle with us.
