This hyper-realistic human robot can speak and cost $8 million to build
Published on May 20, 2022 at 5:33 AM (UTC-4)
by Louise Cheer
Last updated on May 20, 2022 at 5:34 AM (UTC-4)
Edited by
Louise Cheer
It looks like something out of the Terminator, but this humanoid is very real.
Meet Alex, he may look like a human but underneath he’s all metal.
He’s a hyper-realistic robot who speaks, makes 600 human facial expressions and can be customized to look like anyone.
He even has a girlfriend named Alexandra, a barista humanoid.
See Alex in action, watch the video:
Alex is a Robo-C humanoid built by Promobot, a Russian company started by three friends – Oleg Kivokurtsev, Maxim Utev and Igor Yeremeev.
Ten years ago they started making robots from parts bought online.
Their first build was Promobot V1, a robot that could speak and even recognize faces.
It was impressive but they wanted to do more, they wanted it to look more realistic.
“Today we’ve built more than 1,000 robots and they are working all around the world in 50 countries,” Oleg says.
It’s hard work building these humanoid robots, with the company raising $8 million since 2013 to make these creations a reality.
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“Building Alex is a complicated process,” Oleg says.
“Alex contains more than 600 servomotors in his face, in the body, in the arms.”
But despite their incredible progress, Oleg says Promobot wants to do more.
“We want to build a robot who can walk, it’s a really hard area but we know how to do that,” he said.
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You can already see these eerily realistic robots in the wild.
“We’ve built already more than 30 robots (Robo-Cs) and they are working in shopping malls, in museums, in universities and other things,” Oleg said.
But Promobot isn’t the only company working towards a robot future.
UK-based Engineering Arts have created Ameca, another humanoid who can show human emotion.
This robot was revealed at CES 2022 back in January.
WATCH:
Louise Cheer oversees and writes stories about the latest headlines on topics such as automotive, technology, gaming, watches, movies and lifestyle. Louise has been a news editor at Yahoo and Daily Mail in Australia, with more than 10 years of experience in the media industry.
