MIT robotics group reveals emotional robot Nexi

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The Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab has announced its latest project, a small mobile humanoid robot called Nexi that shows emotion.

A video of the robot in action posted to YouTube has taken the blogosphere by storm.

The robot, which moves around on four wheels and has arms and hands to manipulate objects, was partially funded by the Office of Naval Research through the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, as well as by a research grant from Microsoft Corp. Nexi and its three counterparts were developed in cooperation with the University of Massachusetts Amherst and private industry.

Cynthia Breazeal, the lead researcher on the project, calls the class of robots "MDS" for mobile/dexterous/social. The robots are targeted for completion sometime this fall. The purpose of the robots is to support research and education goals in human-robot interaction, teaming, and social learning.

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