Sympathetic Robot Feels, Expresses, Your Pain

Korean Ph.D. Student Kwak So-na won first place in the 2006 Robot Companion Design Contest for Students run by the IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, held this year at the University of Hertfordshire in England. Her prize was for a robot that perceives the user's emotions, then emulates them with BODY LANGUAGE and FACIAL EXPRESSION. Called Hamie (Korean for "hamster"), the robot is still in the design stage, but when completed will droop or perk up based on your mood, and possibly even change color. (Note, the picture above has nothing to do with Hamie.)