If you are a sci-fi lover, the first picture in your mind, when you think of humanoid robots, must come from Isaac Asimov’s novels or enigmatical lifelike figures like Dolores from “Westworld”. With the advancement of generative AI technology and social robots like Sophia of Hanson Robotics, the promise of fully realised robots is not distant. However, the path towards this reality is equally exhilarating.
Developed inside a small lab by a team of students and professors at the Krishna Institute of Engineering and Technology (KIET) in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, Anushka is a humanoid robot designed primarily to greet visitors and delineate information on demand. Anushka’s creators, however, have better ambitions for her which include her future employment in healthcare and consultancy.
Anushka is the first humanoid robot developed in northern India with autonomous movements- the prospect that caught the attention of the media when it was first introduced in March 2024. The claim that her design incorporated Vedic principles sparked further curiosity.
According to the Joint Director of KIET, Dr Manoj Goel, Anushka was manufactured on a budget of only Rs 2 lakh, a minimal fraction of the customary Rs 7-8 crore needed for humanoid robots. He also shared that some of the robot’s components have been procured from a dumpyard.
Anushka’s face has been designed with 3D-printed features. Her flexible silicone face has been crafted by Madame Tussauds in India. Her features have been modelled after a late French princess, which was further modified using Generative AI. The entire project took approximately one and a half years to complete.
Anushka’s expertise in mimicking human gestures is based on a master-slave architecture. An i7 processor acts as her brain, directing a network of microcontrollers and servo motors to control the movements of her hands, jaw, neck, eyes, etc. With the help of natural language processing (NLP), Anushka can respond to any queries accurately. A microphone which is placed thoughtfully behind her necklace, captures all the voice commands and dialogues and converts them into digital signals. An NLP is then employed by a Python program to interpret these signals. This enables the robot to recover required information from a database containing 500 terabytes of data sourced from OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot.
By matching words with particular information and determining how to respond, artificial intelligence plays a significant part in Anushka’s decision-making process by aiding her in selecting relevant data from OpenAI’s extensive Python library. In addition to this, Anushka is provided with computer vision which helps her recognise and identify faces, even at a distance of up to 10 meters away from her, using a high-resolution, 30-megapixel webcam.
The team said, “There are four stages of artificial intelligence at work here: one is when she listens to you, another is when she watches and understands your image via computer vision, the third is when she uses natural language processing to communicate with you, and the final stage commands the servo motors to work in sync. Each level of intelligence is pivotal as together, they ensure that everything functions smoothly.”
Did you know about the ‘uncanny valley’? This is a profound ethical issue that many engineers and scientists face while creating realistic humanoid robots, which in itself is a challenging task.
This term describes the uncanny feeling that humans experience when they first interact with a robot that resembles a human. The term relates to the drop in likability observed when observers see lifelike robots or CGI characters for the first time. ‘Uncanny Valley’ highlights the discomfort that can arise.
Advanced humanoids like Sophia, with their high level of expressiveness, may trigger this uncanny valley effect by appearing almost human, potentially causing mistrust and undermining the role of social robots. Similarly, AI-generated videos or images of people might evoke this same eerie and unsettling response.
