A smile is one of the most charming gestures there is. In robotics, anticipating facial expressions is highly important for human-robot interaction.
Most robots can only recognize and react to human emotions after the human has completed expressing them. Many robotic faces can mimic human facial expressions while interacting with humans, although the robots frequently exhibit delayed expressions.
Aiming to advance such robotic technologies and make them more user-friendly, a team of researchers from Columbia University has created a robot named Emo. This anthropomorphic facial robot can predict a human smile 839 milliseconds in advance and can concurrently animate its face in a smile.