Products

HumanKind

The HumanKind robot is our flagship product, exclusive to the Hanson Robotics collection.

Our bio-inspired HumanKind robots are world renowned for their amazing interactivity and conversational capabilities, which has placed them at the leading edge of life-like technologies in both appearance and behavior. While some robots in our collection are derived from well-known characters in history, such as the late Albert Einstein and Phillip K. Dick, many others were forged here within the walls of Hanson Robotics. All of our robots have a cognitive understanding of the English language, can make eye contact with people, recognize faces and capture the attention of their conversation partner by using a full range of human-like facial expressions.

Each robot is individually hand-crafted and built to perform in a wide variety of applications, including entertainment, research, animation, and even consumer households. Over the years, we have mastered the art of bringing to life amazing characters by sculpting them into crowd drawing masterpieces. All HumanKind robots have the following capabilities:

Emulate over 62 facial and neck muscles
Embedded micro-cameras providing vision recognition
Utilizes the latest in A.I. software technology for face and speech recognition, eye tracking, and conversational operations
Capable of running in full autonomous or Robo-phone mode, meaning that you can turn off the A.I. to use the robot for local/remote pupeteering or even research
Portable and can run on up to 1/20 the power required for comparable products
Interface with standard computers (included with robot)
Can function in a variety of research environments, including computer vision, computational interaction, and speech perception

About our AI

Character Engine: Hanson's "Character Engine" Artificial Intelligence (AI) software can simulate any personality and engage that personality in social interaction. Our software architecture integrates: computer vision, face detection and identification, speech recognition, natural language processing, speech synthesis, and an advanced motion control system.

Character Engine Enhanced: This package has all of the features of the standard Character Engine software, PLUS over 62 preprogrammed facial expressions, multiple sample blend routines and embedded visemes. This package also allows the user to link expressions to specific expressions, or animations.

HumanKind Product Options

1. HumanKind robots are offered in one of the following packages:

HumanKind Silver Edition: A beautifully expressive conversational character robot head with Hanson's "Character Engine" AI software. This is an economy package for independent developers, researchers, or animatronics companies with an existing product mix or entertainment solution.
This robot is only available in any of our current characters, without the PC, Bose Speakers, or mahogany base.

HumanKind Gold Edition: This option offers the best value for the price, as it comes with a fully expressive robot head on an attractive mahogany pedestal, equipped with a laptop computer and built in Bose sound system. This version comes with the advanced version of Hanson's "Character Engine" and unlimited updates.

HumanKind Custom Edition: We can build you! That's right, no matter who you are or where you're from, we can build life-like representation of any character, past or present. Our state of the art 4-D laser scanning technology takes a precise topographical image of your face, covering every nook, cranny and contour, and then transfers the data into a solid mold. Apart from the physical attributes the robot, our team of A.I. developers, scientists and robotic designers will build a personality based on your knowledge, memory, thoughts, and speech patterns.

Bonus: For slightly extra, you can get the HumanKind Traveler Kit, which includes any one of the categories above, PLUS a large foam lined customized pelican case with extra storage compartments. The Traveler Kit includes:

15 Spare Servos
1 Spare controller board
2 Spare eye cameras
Extra cables
Frubber repair kit
Canned expressions built into the controller board

2. HumanKind with Body

The advanced option incorporates all of the features of the HumanKind Robot Edition, except with a full body to complete the human-like experience. This option comes in one of two packages

Static Body: inanimate body with no moving parts other than the head.

Dynamic Body: this option incorporates robotic arms that are capable of displaying a wide variety of humanlike gestures. With this package, the robot can move his/her arms autonomously while engaging the customer with eye contact and intelligent conversation. This feature adds a real-life element to your robotic display, putting your customers in a suspended state of disbelief.

3. HumanKind Showcase

The HumanKind Showcase is the next level of conversational character robot entertainment. This package is geared towards museums, theme parks and entertainment companies that are looking to add that unique edge to their interactive entertainment mix.

This package is available only as a Dynamic Body.

We take pride in our products and hope that you enjoy the dedication to perfection that we have imparted into each and every robot.

For Sales Inquiries click here.

Leasing Available

We also offer leasing if you are looking for temporary solutions rather than long term purchases. Utilize our HumanKind Robots for the following:

Trade Shows
Commercials
Live concerts
Political Campaigns
Marketing
Movies

Meet Our Family of Artificial Humans:

Joey Chaos: the Humanoid Rock Star

Joey Chaos is the newest edition to the Hanson Robotics family. This one of a kind humanoid rock star is known for his attitude and smart remarks. Joey loves to talk about music, especially pertaining to his favorite genre, punk. Don’t be surprised if he decides to inform you on his view of capitalism either, he is an extremely opinionated robot, especially when it comes to political issues.

A collaboration of East and West: The Albert-Hubo

The Albert Hubo is a unique, completely battery-powered, untethered walking body. The Albert Hubo is the first ever walking robot with realistic, humanlike expressions. Our Frubber™ material makes this possible, because it requires MUCH less force to move into facial expressions than do previous materials (less than 1/20th the force and energy than the softest animatronics materials, according to published tests). This means that the Albert head can run for hours on AA batteries, be mobile, and mounted on a walking robot body. The expressions are lifelike-as can be seen at in this movie.

A robotic humanoid sculpture named Vera

Now stored at the University of West England (UWE) in Bristol, Vera was one of Dr. Hanson's original attempts at identity emulation. She was later featured in an issue of WIRED. She was one of the first robots built using Frubber™ to allow natural facial expressions.

Meet Jules, our androgynous conversationalist

Jules is something of a "complete package" with a combination of interesting features. By integrating natural language processing with ASR, TTS, computer vision, artistry, and narrative, you can have a natural, interactive conversation with Jules. The software allowing Jules such advanced capacity for interaction was developed in collaboration with Personality Forge, Benji Adams, and Heather McKeen. Jules combines the work of writers who author the robot's dialogue using "chat-bot" tools, with natural-language AI (such as LSA statistical search techniques) and word.net to simulate an eerily human conversational intelligence. Jules also uses computer vision, including face tracking and face recognition, to simulate complete verbal and nonverbal interaction, such as maintaining eye contact and turning to follow fellow conversationalists. Jules now resides at the University of West England in Bristol.

The best of all worlds: Eva

Eva is a humanlike robot of universal beauty achieved by incorporating a mixture of ethnic characteristics. The face is designed with an idealistic youthful beauty in mind, female but with masculine characteristics (large jaw and cranial area). The design is intended to be reminiscent of the bust of Nefertiti displayed in the Berlin Altes museum, but otherwise sculpted entirely from Dr. Hanson's imagination.

One of the first: Yargh-bot

Yargh-bot is a disembodied, animated pirate head that was started as a collaborative work with artist Thomas Williams in the spring of 2002. The Yargh-bot has 11 degrees of freedom, which affects large, bold expressions and head and eye motions, and requires only AA batteries to power. One standout feature in the Yargh-bot is the clever use of his eyes: While the realistic-looking eye is blind, a camera is hidden in the eyepatch (or blind eye) that is able to track whatever was passing in front of Yargh-bot. The resulting robot "vision" is visible on a nearby computer screen.

A robotic portrait of Philip K. Dick

In an unparalleled technical collaboration, a team of artists, writers, engineers, literary scholars, and freethinkers came together to create a lifelike, roboticized portrait of Philip K. Dick. The robot was featured at WIRED magazine's NextFest, June 25-27, 2005. The robot portrayed Dick in both form and intellect through an artificial intelligence-driven personality. The hardware manipulated Hanson's proprietary lifelike skin material, known as Frubber™, to affect extremely realistic expressions using very low power (1/20th of the energy expenditure of other available technologies). Cameras in the eyes allowed the robot to perceive people's identity and behavior through advanced machine vision and biometric-identification software. The robot was able track faces, perceive facial expressions, and recognize people from the crowd after a limited period of interaction.

Philip K. Dick model is not available for sale.