{"id":282178,"date":"2026-02-09T14:14:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282178\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T14:14:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:14:17","slug":"this-robot-with-a-working-human-face-is-incredibly-unsettling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282178\/","title":{"rendered":"This Robot With a Working Human Face Is Incredibly Unsettling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, 21 humanoid robots squared up against each other<\/a> in the World Humanoid Robot Games\u2019 half marathon race in Beijing in an unintentionally hilarious debauchery<\/a> of broken limbs, face plants \u2014 plus sweaty human engineers, who were forced to accompany them along the way.<\/p>\n

Coming in third place was a bipedal robot called Walker 2, by the Shanghai-based robotics company DroidUP, an impressive feat that required no battery swaps after an exhausting four hours and 25 minutes of running.<\/p>\n

Now, the firm has turned its attention to something far more unsettling than watching a robot scuttle across the finish line. DroidUP recently showed off Moya, a \u201cwarm\u201d robot that features human-like skin and eerily animated moving facial features.<\/p>\n

\u201cWarm\u201d isn\u2019t just a turn of phrase, either \u2014 Moya\u2019s skin can maintain a humanlike temperature of 89 to 96 degrees Fahrenheit, a feature that could make it more difficult for DroidUP to argue that the bot isn\u2019t intended for adult purposes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company showed off its latest invention at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Shanghai\u2019s Zhangjiang Robotics Valley, calling it the \u201cworld\u2019s first highly bionic robot that deeply integrates human aesthetics and advanced humanoid sports\u201d in a translated press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bot\u2019s face is disarming. The company says it allows for \u201crich expressions such as joy, anger, sorrow and happiness\u201d; in a video<\/a> shared by the Chinese goverment-run Shanghai Media Group (SMB), Moya can even be seen catching the reporter\u2019s line of sight by adjusting the direction of its pupils.<\/p>\n

But unlike many of its hyper-realistic counterparts, Moya can go for a walk as well. In a demonstration, Moya stiffly walks past the camera as its actuators audibly click along, firmly dispelling the illusion. The company claims Moya has a 92 percent human-like walking accuracy, but given the evidence, we\u2019d wager the real number is less flattering than that.<\/p>\n

\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tMoya, customizable humanoid robot, makes debut in Shanghai, powered by DroidUp’s latest tech\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cMost robots on the market today have hard shells and feel cold and mechanical,\u201d DroidUP founder Li Qingdu told SMB in the video. \u201cA robot that truly serves human life should be warm, have a temperature, almost like a living being that people can connect with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underneath it all is the company\u2019s latest Walker 3 robot platform, which features a suite of cameras and LIDAR sensors that allow for \u201cautonomous path planning and real-time obstacle avoidance capabilities,\u201d according to the press release.<\/p>\n

Compared to its Walker 2 predecessor, who finished third during its half marathon attempt last year, Walker 3 is a lot more compact and lighter, allowing it to be \u201cintegrated into a very realistic torso, enabling the creation of a more aesthetically lifelike humanoid robot,\u201d as DroidUP product director Tang Jun told SMB.<\/p>\n

More on humanoid robots: Alarming New Video Shows Robot Making Incredibly Realistic Facial Expressions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, 21 humanoid robots squared up against each other in the World Humanoid Robot Games\u2019 half marathon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-282178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}