Watch this terrifying robotic torso spring into life
by Sascha Pare · livescience.comA robotics company has created a fully movable, ultra-creepy humanoid torso that looks like it's straight out of the television series "Westworld," a new video shows.
Clone Robotics — a startup founded in Poland in 2021 — specializes in biomimetic robotics, or those with lifelike movement, strength and dexterity. The company's first product, the "Clone Hand," is a robotic hand with artificial muscles and bones that behaves like a human hand. The hand can rotate its thumb and catch a ball with uncanny precision.
Now, Clone Robotics has designed a full torso — and a video shows the humanoid upper body springing into life.
Torso by Clone | Bimanual Android with Artificial Muscles - YouTube
The robotic torso is mounted to a human-like pelvis and topped with a head-like appendage. It has a rigid spine, a solid rib cage and ghostly white "skin" reminiscent of the work-in-progress automatons from "Westworld" — a dystopian TV show set in a fictional amusement park where guests interact with android "hosts."
Related: Chinese humanoid robot is the 'fastest in the world' thanks to its trusty pair of sneakers
A system of battery-operated water pumps and valves powers the Clone Torso. The robot carries a flexible water container, and this water circulates through the torso via tubes to provide the necessary pressure to "flex" bionic muscles and activate the associated tendons.
"The first bimanual Torso created at Clone includes an actuated elbow, a cervical spine (neck), and anthropomorphic shoulders," representatives wrote in the description of the new video. The torso's arm movements are still somewhat jerky, but "bimanual manipulation training is in progress," the representatives said.
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Clone hopes its humanoid robots could one day replace humans for essential tasks, such as hand operations in industrial assembly lines and manufacturing, as well as daily chores that involve handling or moving items. Such robots could also aid in medical rehabilitation through teleoperation — in which recovering patients could control the robot's movements remotely, thereby regaining muscle function.
The Clone Torso has a strong yet lightweight skeleton that provides structural support for its other components.
Clone Robotics did not respond to questions from Live Science about the materials used in the torso and about whether the company is planning to further extend the design into a full roboticized body.