Henrik Scharfe, a psychologist from the Aalborg University, Denmark has developed a robot, the Geminoid DK. This robot is the third model of the Geminoid series. Developed initially by Hiroshi Ishiguro and his team at Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), the Geminoids are a series of androids.
GeminoidDK
Scharfe says that it is important to study the interactions between humans and robots and those realistic-looking robots could enable humans to learn.
Geminoid DK can be controlled using compressed air. The robot replicates Scharfe’s facial and body expressions including torso, eyes, head, and mouth, while he performs in front of a webcam. The robot replicates the movements with a time delay of only 0.3 seconds. The delay in movement appears as if the robot is in conversation with a person standing in front of him.
The robot will be kept in a shop and it will start interacting with the common people. Scharfe will answer any query that the robot faces through a headset and observe the results.
He added that they are also proposing to conduct an experiment where an employee is fired by Geminoid DK to test the kind of facial expressions required by the robot to carry out such an activity.
Source: http://c.aau.dk/