Dr. David Hanson, founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics, announced a collaboration with Disney to give artificial intelligence to their characters. Hanson spoke in London at TechXLR8, a technical conference, where he made the announcement.
Hanson Robotics has some renown for developing robots with the capability to mimic human expressions and interactions. Hanson’s ultimate goal is to create machines that “will have emotional intelligence matching – and one day surpassing – human emotional intelligence.”
Hanson designs robots to learn from interactions with humans, and adjust their behavior accordingly. If you or your child were owners of one of these robots, the machine would learn and retain information about you, and how to communicate with you.
Hanson has developed a commercial robot already, in the form of a mobile teaching robot called Professor Einstein that is currently being shipped to the US, UK, Canada, and Hong Kong.
The company hasn’t given any details as to which Disney creations may be first for the robot treatment, but Hanson did use a slide of Frozen‘s Elsa when speaking of the draw of characters with human features. The current plan is to have something launched by 2018, so we should know more details soon. For now, let your imagination run wild as you think of what Disney character you would love to have as your robot friend.
Source: techradar
Image: Frozen (2013), Walt Disney Studios
