AMECA: An AI-Powered Humanoid Robot That Writes Poems

AMECA is an AI-powered humanoid robot that writes poems in several languages on request

AMECA can speak a variety of languages—including French, Chinese, and dozens more—write a poem in a moment, or draw a cat at your request. You can obtain a tight grin on her rubbery blue face if you ask for a smile.

AMECA is a humanoid robot that can interact with humans and respond to queries and orders thanks to generative artificial intelligence. The International Conference on Robotics and Automation, or ICRA, in London this week gave attendees a peek into the future through the presentation of hundreds of robots.

The competition is akin to the Olympics for robots, with student teams taking part in competitions like robot cooking and autonomous driving, academics presenting their research, and companies showcasing their newest products.

It happens at the same time as top scientists and figures from the IT sector, such as Microsoft and Google executives, issued a dire warning about the dangers that artificial intelligence poses to humanity, stating that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority."

Robotic dog packs mobbed the exhibition space. Visitors controlled the robotic arms of the wheeled sentries using joysticks and virtual reality headsets. The University of Bonn students displayed their award-winning creation, an avatar system that enables users to manage robotic hands to move chess pieces, turn switches, or operate a drill while wearing VR glasses.

According to Ph.D. student Max Schwarz, one of the main difficulties was creating a system that someone who wasn't on the team could use right away.

"It means we have to build an intuitive system that people can learn in a very short amount of time, like half an hour," he added.

According to Kaspar Althoefer, general chair of the conference's 2023 edition, new artificial intelligence systems are among the topics of conversation at this year's event.

"ChatGPT is a fantastic illustration of how AI has advanced significantly. Additionally, there is a lot of interest in fusing this with robots, according to Althoefer. "For instance, there wouldn't need to be any programming if ChatGPT and a robotic device were used together," the author explains.

Robots from Engineered Arts, the British firm that developed AMECA, are made for duties that require interaction with people, such as assisting guests at theme parks, according to Will Jackson, director of the business.

"Humanoid robots are all about communication with people: It's about facial expression, it's about gestures—so that conversation, storytelling, and entertainment, those are the things that we're interested in," he added.

He claimed that because AI has advanced so swiftly, mechanical engineering is now the main robotic difficulty.

AMECA is more recent and has thus far the most visited museums and academic institutions. It generates drawings with the AI picture generator Stable Diffusion and generates answers with OpenAI's GPT-3. AMECA took a few seconds to come up with a few lyrics when asked to write a poem:

"Associated Press, a dependable news source, keeps us up to date on all the facts and opinions; they cover everything from politics to sports, and their journalists always return our calls. A beacon of truth in a world full of lies, AP's reporting never ceases to surprise."