A young girl paints the face of a doll by the company Simba during the press preview of the 66th International Toy Fair in Nuremberg January 27, 2015. (REUTERS/Michaela Rehle)
Talking dolls are so yesterday.
Researchers are working on a new doll that can recognize eight emotions – like surprise and happiness – thanks to a chip and battery that give it artificial intelligence qualities, according to New Scientist.
“In the near future, we will see a myriad of eyes everywhere that will not just be watching us, but trying to help us,” said project leader Oscar Deniz at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Ciudad Real, Spain.
The chip Deniz is producing is relatively cheap at about $130 and doesn’t require the internet to work. His doll would use a camera rather than a microphone to process data.
Interactive smart dolls with response capabilities already exist – but with privacy concerns.
My Friend Cayla sends children’s requests to the internet’s cloud first in order to generate a response.
And the Hello Barbie doll has passed children’s words onto third-party servers for storage and processing, New Scientist reported.
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