'Feeling' iCub3 Robot Aims For Metaverse
The Italian Institute of Technology’s humanoid robot, iCub3, can help people touch and feel remotely. The new system was first tested at La Biennale di Venezia late last year. When a demonstration was conducted involving a human operator based at the IIT, Genova and the robot and a guide in Venice. The two sites are 300km far away and the communication relied on basic optical fibre connection. Researchers demonstrated that the iCub3 takes on the remote operator’s movement, voice, and face expressions while receiving visual, auditory, haptic and touch feedbacks. The user is provided with a headset that tracks the user expressions, eyelids, and eye motions. These head features are projected onto the avatar - giving iCub3 very similar facial expressions to the person using it. When the guide hugged the avatar in Venice, the operator in Genova feels the hug thanks to the iFeel suit. The robot could help people share memories and emotions from the other side of the world. Daniele Pucci Head of Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence at IIT also sees iCub as having a future in the Metaverse Mark Zuckerberg’s recently launched virtual reality social network. “What I also see in our near future is the application of this system to the so-called metaverse, which is actually based on immersive and remote human avatars,” he explains.
