Hanson Robotics has spent over two decades chasing a bold idea: Lifelike machines that can think, feel, and connect.
From garage experiments to celebrity feuds to the United Nations, the journey has been anything but ordinary. As a new documentary pulls back the curtain on that story, the influence of Hanson’s AI-powered androids is all over the place, including robotics firms developing next-generation humanoids, STEM classes, fashion, and Hollywood blockbusters.
“I’m Dr. David Hanson, and I build robots with character,” he said during a 2009 Ted Talk. “By that, I mean that I develop robots that are characters, but also robots that will eventually come to empathize with you.”
Hanson’s Origins
Founder David Hanson’s early interests in art and science fiction foreshadowed his later career. Born in 1969 in Dallas, Hanson grew up reading Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick.
He studied film, animation and video at the Rhode Island School of Design, and focused on interactive arts and engineering when going for his PhD at the University of Texas at Dallas. As a graduate student in the mid-90s, Hanson built an experimental humanoid head as part of an independent study project.
Hanson’s professional career began at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked as both a sculptor and a robotics technical consultant. The unique blend of artistic abilities and engineering know-how became a hallmark of Hanson’s approach to robotics.
His vision was to create robots with extremely humanlike appearance and behavior, integrating figurative arts, cognitive science, and mechanical engineering.
Frubber
He invented a novel elastic polymer skin material called Frubber, or flesh-rubber, that mimics human soft tissue and helps robots exhibit realistic facial expressions. After Disney, Hanson published research in materials science and artificial intelligence and secured several patents in robot skin and facial expression mechanisms.
He formally founded Hanson Robotics in 2003 in Dallas. The founder described himself as a garage inventor during the early days, building robot prototypes with limited resources.
KBot Prototype
Hanson presented an early prototype robotic head called KBot at the 2004 American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
KBot had Frubber skin with finely sculpted humanlike features. Twenty-four servo motors produced facial movements. Cameras in its eyes delivered vision and the ability to track faces.
Another early creation called Hertz was a feminine animatronic robot head that took about nine months to build.
Philip K. Dick Resurrected
Hanson got his first shot of virality in 2005 when he unveiled his Philip K. Dick android at the Wired Next Fest. Designed to resemble the science fiction icon, its artificial intelligence incorporated thousands of pages of the author’s writings from novels, letters, and journals.
The conversational AI used a latent semantic analysis-based dialog system to emulate the author’s responses. The android’s head displayed a wide range of expressions thanks to its 36 servo motors beneath the skin. It had machine vision to track and recognize people. Hanson’s team won the AAAI Open Interaction Award for the conversational portrait.
The Philip K. Dick android head was lost during airline travel in 2005 and never recovered. However, Hanson later collaborated with others to rebuild the android with improved vision and a new bust.
Albert HUBO
Also in 2005, Hanson unveiled Albert HUBO, its collaboration with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). An android head resembling the physicist sat atop the institute’s HUBO bipedal robot, developed as South Korea’s answer to Honda’s ASIMO.
Albert HUBO could walk autonomously and move its arms. Its head mimicked Einstein’s expressions with around 30 degrees of facial freedom. It even spoke in Einstein’s tone using a voice synthesizer.
Jules the Androgenous Android
In 2006, Hanson introduced Jules, an androgynous-looking humanoid robot head, at Wired Next Fest. Hanson collaborated with the Personality Forge AI chatbot platform on its software to give Jules a playful and conversational personality. Its flexible face, powered by many micro motors, enabled Jules to lipsync and emote realistically.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m comfortable with my androgyny, really,” the robot said when asked what confused it during a demo. “But at times I feel, well, female and, other times, male.”
2007: Zeno and Joey Chaos
Zeno, introduced in 2007, was a small humanoid robot modeled after Hanson’s son of the same name. The friendly, exaggerated facial style was inspired by Japanese anime character Astro Boy.
An edgier 2007 creation, Joey Chaos, had a punk-rock persona, complete with spiky hair and an attitude to match. Joey was created to study human-robot interaction, particularly how people respond to personalities with rough edges. Its speech recognition software helped it engage in natural conversations and even tell jokes and banter.
“I’m a living identity crisis,” the robot said during a demo. “That’s why we should build human-like robots, even though they are really weird.”
Alice and Eva
Starting in 2008, Hanson teamed up with the MIRA Lab at the University of Geneva in Switzerland to develop Alice and Eva, female-presenting robotic heads with expressive capabilities. Backed by the EU funded cognitive robotics consortium, Alice and Eva were intended as research platforms.
BINA48 Digital Immortality Experiment
In 2010, Hanson completed BINA48, a unique robot commissioned by entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt. The name stands for Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture.
The android bust was modeled after Rothblatt’s wife, Bina Aspen. Its AI included a database of the real woman’s memories and thoughts, reportedly containing dozens of books, interviews, and conversations, which the robot drew upon for discussions. The experiment in digital immortality found a home at the Terasem Movement Foundation in Vermont.
From Texas to Hong Kong
In 2013, Hanson Robotics relocated its headquarters from Texas to Hong Kong. The move to the Hong Kong Science Park meant Hanson could tap into the region’s robust electronics manufacturing base.
At the 2015 Global Sources electronics fair in Hong Kong, Hanson introduced Han, a masculine robot head and torso designed for human face detection and interactive dialogue in social settings. Han mimicked people’s facial expressions and offered a range of witty remarks. Baldheaded, affable, and slightly mischievous, Han had been proposed for roles like hotel concierge or customer service greeter.
Robotics and Pop Culture Converge
Hanson’s profile rose to new heights in 2016 when it unveiled its most famous creation to date.
Sophia’s debut came at a cultural and technological inflection point. Public fascination with synthetic humans was surging, with films like Ex-Machina (2014), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), Chappie (2015), and Ghost in the Shell (2017) exploring the boundaries between humanity and artificial life.
At the same time, a race toward lifelike androids was blossoming.
Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China developed Jia Jia. Nicknamed the Robot Goddess, the fembot stunned audiences with its photorealistic face, flowing hair, and synchronized lip movements.
At the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Professor Nadia Thalmann created Nadine, a socially intelligent android modeled after herself. In Japan, the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory developed Erica as a television news anchor and conversational companion with advanced speech and gaze behaviors.
In the UK, Engineered Arts was working toward more lifelike creations with its Mesmer series of humanoid robots. And in the United States, Realbotix introduced its AI-powered robotic head named Harmony, which combined facial animation, memory-based AI, and a custom personality engine that users could program.
The World-Famous Sophia
Sophia, a female-presenting social humanoid robot, made its debut at that year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin. During an on-stage interview, Sophia showcased its combination of advanced technologies.
The android’s appearance was inspired in part by Audrey Hepbern and Hanson’s wife. Sophia is often seen with its transparent skull cap with its electronics exposed, a conscious design choice to remind people it’s a machine.
In 2017, the government of Saudi Arabia famously, and controversially, granted Sophia citizenship, making it the first machine to receive citizenship of any country. Sophia also became the first non-person to hold a UN title after being appointed the United Nations Development Programme’s Innovation Ambassador.
The android chatted with Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes, got into a weird Twitter feud with Chrissy Tiegan, appeared on the Tonight Show, and went on a pretend date with the Fresh Prince. Sophia’s witty and sometimes unpredictable responses sparked debate about the state of artificial intelligence.
Sophia’s witty and sometimes unpredictable responses sparked debate about the state of artificial intelligence. The robot’s striking look and personality inspired a character in the video game Detroit Become Human.
Sophia entered the NFT world in 2021, co-creating a digital art piece called Sophia Instantiation in collaboration with artist Andrea Bonaceto. In a much-publicized auction, the artwork sold for nearly $700,000.
For many, Sophia embodied the promise, and fear, of an upcoming technological singularity, the hypothesized point where AI surpasses human intelligence. Others, like deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun, criticized the robot as a mere chatbot with a face.
“Well, if Sophia was just an art piece, I would have no problem with it but it’s presented as something else,” LeChun said in September 2019 on Lex Friedman’s podcast.
Sophia’s global media presence also amplified public awareness of the uncanny valley in a way few robots ever had, turning an academic theory into a mainstream talking point. The uncanny valley was coined to describe the strange feeling people report when something like almost human but not quite.
Hanson Robotics established Sophia as a platform for ongoing research in areas like robotic empathy, eldercare, education, and entertainment.
Consumer Androids
The company struck while the iron was hot, unveiling its small personal robot, Professor Einstein. As Hanson’s first consumer product, Professor Einstein was designed as an educational toy and personal tutor. The robot could walk on its two legs and gesticulate, while its cartoon-like face made expressive motions and synched to its speech.
Hanson Robotics followed the Einstein project with Little Sophia, a 35 cm bot fashioned as the world-famous android’s kid sister. The miniature robot runs on a Rasberry Pi and is an open platform. Like the little Einstein, Sophia’s mini me launched via Kickstarter and was priced under two hundred and fifty dollars. They are no longer available for purchase.
Grace the Robot Nurse
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanson introduced Grace as a robotic assistant for the healthcare sector. The robot’s appearance was deliberately modeled to be comforting.
Grace’s hardware is more advanced than prior Hanson robots. A thermal imaging camera in Grace’s chest can detect body temperature and measure patient responsiveness.
The robot speaks English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, with an AI brain engineered for basic health assessments, talk therapy, and social stimulation for patients. Grace simulates more than 48 muscle movements for expressions.
Diego-San
Hanson Robotics has also created custom robots and art installations over the years. They developed Diego-San, a toddler-like research robot, in collaboration with UC San Diego as a platform for studying childhood development. Musicians David Byrne and Brian Echo have also incorporated Hanson robots into their performances.
The Future of Humanoids
For the last few years, Hanson Robotics has been moving toward mass production. Competition in the niche has crowded significantly, with firms like China’s EX-Robot, Realbotix Corp., and Engineered Arts deploying their androids in the real world.
A new documentary, My Robot Sophia, follows David Hanson and his most iconic creation, shown here in a recent video with an upgraded design. Sophia’s influence will also be on display in theaters this summer in M3GAN 2.0, the highly anticipated sequel to the 2022 techno-horror hit.