MIT's Nexi MDS Robot

(botjunkie) -- This is Nexi, a small humanoid robot designed by MIT Media Lab’s Personal Robotics Group. Nexi is an MDS robot, which stands for “Mobile/Dexterous/Social.” And indeed, Nexi is all of these things. She moves around on a pair of dynamically self-balancing wheels (like a Segway) which are part of a uBot5 platform, something I saw in action last year at RoboDevelopment.

Her arms, wrists, and hands are fully controllable, allowing her to grip and lift objects of up to 10 pounds, and her face features an array of movable (and quite expressive) features including eyes, eyebrows, eyelids, and mouth. Each eye has a color camera, and an IR system in her forhead lets Nexi make 3D maps of her environment. full story