Yosi Bar-Cohen, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, will speak Wednesday, June 20th at 4:30-5:30 p.m. at the Hub, 111-104.

Nature inspired many inventions and the field of technology that is based on mimicking or inspiration of nature is widely known as Biomimetics. The most complex and challenging to mimic is to produce humanlike robots. In movies and science fiction books such robots are presented as having already reached the level of becoming like us, but the reality is that we still cannot find them in a “store near you”. Even though you cannot buy a robo-assistant yet, there have been enormous advances in the related technologies including speech; voice, and face recognition; body language expressions and interpretation, sense of touch and many others. The potential of a NASA mission operated by robo-astronauts would generate enormous public excitement. You may want to know that such a robot was made and has already been launched to the Space Station. Also, you are going to hear what other humanlike robots have been made, what they can do, and whether we should worry about having one of them.

For information on the JPL Stories series, contact Teresa Bailey at 4-9233.