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The University of Reading - Cybernetics at Reading - News

The University of Reading - Cybernetics at Reading - News:

"A new robot at the University of Reading has been rated as suitable for adults only by the University's Ethics and Research Committee. The K-28 robot, named Morgui (mandarin Chinese for Magic (Mor) Ghost (Gui)), consists of a rapid action robot head which has been specially designed as a test bed for multi-sensor integration. Although it has 5 senses, only two of these, vision and audio, are human equivalents, whilst the remainder, radar, infra-red and ultrasonics are extrasensory as far as humans are concerned.

Professor Kevin Warwick of the University's Cybernetics Department said 'We want to investigate how people react when they first encounter 'Mo', as we lovingly like to call the robot. Through one of Mo's eyes he can watch peoples' responses to him following them around. It appears this is not deemed to be acceptable for Under 18 year olds without prior consent from their legal guardian. This presents us with a big problem as we cannot demonstrate Mo in action either to visitors or potential students. In fact the whole of our robotics lab is now officially a no-go area for non-adults'.

Morgui is being used in research as a test bed for integrating different sensory input to provide an overall control strategy for robot behaviour."

Click to see the pic. Looks like the terminator, only scarier. Guess it freaks out the kiddies when it follows their movements with its eyes.

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