"The most important thing for a humanoid robot is communication," says Will Jackson, founder of the British company Engineered Arts, which developed 'Ameca'. "Our goal is a robot that understands human facial expressions and gestures and is able to interact in a human way." Engineered Arts first presented Ameca as a prototype in December 2021. Shortly afterwards, in May 2022, Ameca made its European premiere at the Museum of the Future. Back then as a guest performance, the robot has now come to stay. An AI interface and the associated possibilities for interaction are completely new. The number of motors that refine facial expressions has been increased from 11 to 27.

According to the museum, the human-like face creates trust and acceptance. The content of the conversation is based on the knowledge of the connected LLM (Large Language Model), in this case ChatGPT-4o. Both the persona and the direction of the conversation are controlled by a system of prompts specially developed at the Museum of the Future, which includes several variants for different occasions and application situations.

The robot chats with museum visitors in all common languages, informing and motivating them. "The vision for Ameca is human interaction, a robot that you can talk to, that understands human facial expressions and gestures and that communicates through movements and 'emotions', not just words. Instead of looking at screens and typing on keyboards, we should be able to interact with our technology in a more human way. Machines should understand a smile, a head movement or a hand movement," says Will Jackson about his research work, to which he has dedicated himself for more than 15 years. "Ameca is designed as an open platform for software developers and researchers and is also designed for hardware upgrades, so we hope that Ameca's performance will continue to improve over time," adds Jackson.

Robot show and yoga

Part of the robot team at the Future Museum Nuremberg.

© German Museum Nuremberg

"AMECAs can be used in a variety of ways: from welcomers who can provide information about the museum, to informal chats and specialist discussions. Whether in a cheeky chatty tone, snobbishly distinguished or ironic, whether with fantasies of world domination or altruistic - AMECA can be anything. Anything we want," says Susanne Grube, Head of Programs/Education and Laboratories at the Zukunftsmuseum. "It can be booked for events and programmed specifically for the occasion. A robot show and a yoga program are also planned," continues Grube.

The museum is home to a dozen different robots: 'Kuka LBR iiwa' is a collaborative industrial robot that can interact with humans directly and without protective shields. 'Telemax Evo' pro is used in war zones and danger zones, while the therapy robot 'Paro' is appreciated by people with dementia in retirement homes. The robot cat 'Bella Bot' also arouses emotions. She is one of the service robots.

AMECA joins the group of robots with human-like characteristics. They are designed to appeal to the emotions: from the simple Keeko to Murata Cheerleader and Nao through to Harmony. Harmony is a sex doll with a robotic head. Closed, pre-programmed conversations are possible via an AI interface. She is a pioneer of human-like robotics. AMECA currently comes closest to the vision of a humanoid robot. It is at a turning point in the advancement of human-robot interaction.