Spielberg will be mighty pleased with an effort that would remind him of his very own “War of the worlds”. Only, this time around, the subject is a robotic manifestation and no visitor from outer space. With a warning board that screams “might scare the living hell out of children, parental discretion mandatory”, there is little you need to do to endorse the obnoxiousness of the weird looking Walking Head Robot.

 Measuring 2m across and arthropod-like (six-legged), the walking robot will most certainly make heads turn. And, this we say, not on the basis of its strange looks alone. The WALKING HEAD is quite a performer, too. Enclosed within the LCD-generated virtual human head is a highly intelligent chip – the processing unit of the autonomous walking robot. And a scanning ultra-sound sensor builds bridges between artificial intelligence and extra-sensory perception.

The sensor-driven robot detects human presence around it. And, what ensues is a rousing welcome befitting royalty. The robot puts up a marvelous display of gyrations – a set of pre-programmed movements – on a platform. The best, though, is yet to come. The 4m wide platform is no impediment for the robot’s fluidity. As it reaches the edge, it backs off and resumes in a different direction. The pneumatically actuated robot is expected to evolve further to transform into an actual-virtual system with a wide repertoire of facial expressions, vocalizations, tilts, and so on. Also, there is a possibility that the robot may combine motion icons from its menu and enthrall you further. We are keeping our fingers crossed.