Plenty of researchers are working on ways to make robots even more human-friendly. This video from Hybrid Robotics shows how the Cassie robot can be enhanced to twist, wiggle, and walk to behave with emotions. As the engineers explain, they use:
use an animation framework to design emotive motions for the virtual robot’s character. A dynamics optimizer is then used to convert the animated motion to dynamically feasible motion. Real-time standing and walking controllers and an automaton are developed to bring the virtual character to life.
[HT]