The Creepiest Robot Faces You’ve Ever Seen, Courtesy Of “Face Rubber”

Robotics designer David Hanson builds intelligent robots with amazingly lifelike human faces that can make eye contact and understand human speech well enough to hold a conversation. A key to this technology is a facial material Hanson calls “Frubber”–a contraction of face and rubber. Developed using techniques inspired by nature, Frubber is a lightweight polymer plastic that contracts and folds just like human skin. Natural-looking faces on a robot, says Hanson, enable fast communication between man and machine. Hanson’s team is looking at biomimicry in order to emulate what it means to be human in a machine.