The idea that humans could communicate with a robot on a social level has been thrust upon us repeatedly. How such a scientific breakthrough is to occur is hard to imagine since most of the technology we see today is software based. MIT's NEXI body is set to change that perception; NEXI body has human-like expressions and also speech. The product of the Lab's team, directed by Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, is a human-like robot named Nexi that speaks and features complex hand movements and facial gestures. Nexi is a Mobile Dexterous Social robot, or MDS. The robot is mobile as it can navigate via wheels. It features a mobile base that is self-balance, akin to a mini-Segway. It can travel at human walking speed has two arms that have four degrees of freedom. The arms together can pick up a 10-pound object, fully extended. Several of the robots can "team up" to lift heavier objects. The shoulder chassis of the robot is mounted on a torso pivot, giving it full freedom of motion. It has a three-fingered hand with an opposing thumb. It can support itself, move its hand to express emotions and even has an expressive face. The face has 15 DOF and features expressive eyebrows, gaze, eyelids, and mandible. Each eye has a color CCD camera and the head features an active indoor IR camera. Four separate microphones allow it to localize sounds and another microphone is used to detect speech. It has a speaker to allow it to synthesize speech. After all the effort put into it the first assignment for this expressive robot is to interact with humans. A team of four robots will be doing just that during a two-week pilot program at the Boston Museum of Science in the summer of 2009.

While the MIT researchers admit that human level learning and more complex conversational skills remain currently unsolved challenges, Nexi certainly represents an amalgamation of exciting and exotic advances in robotics. With robots like Nexi that can learn and interact, the world may soon become a very different place.The MIT team's research is sponsored by an ONR DURIP Award "Mobile, Dexterous, Social Robots to Support Complex Human-Robot Teamwork in Uncertain Environments" and by a Microsoft grant.

An opposable thumb is supposedly a mark of human intelligence, and is among Nexi's features. Nexi and its fellow MDS robots feature human-like forearm and wrist motions as well.