THIS is Ecci — the world’s first robot complete with tendons and muscles like his fictitious cousins in The Terminator movies.

As well as boasting human-like movements and grip, Ecci also has an ability that up until now only humans displayed — he can learn from his mistakes.

Scientists at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who built him claim he is the world’s “smartest artificial intelligence creation”.

A computer built into Ecci’s brain allows him to learn from accidents such as stumbling or dropping things by analysing information on how it happened to avoid making the same mistakes in future.

It brings robots almost up to date with the humanoid metallic monsters in The Terminator movies — they were also a mixture of machine and muscle that could behave and think like a human.

Capability

One of the scientists on the project, Professor Rolf Pfeifer, said that although Ecci, whose full name is Eccerobot, has only one Cyclops-like eye, he has the vision capability of two human eyes.

Explaining how Ecci was created, Professor Pfeifer said: “We built the skeleton, muscles and tendons with a special type of plastic which needed a lot of patience.

Muscling in … Ecci has muscles and tendons

CEN

“To move the joints, the tendons are connected to electric motors that allow the plastic bones to be moved.

“It opens up a lot of possibilities but in particular it will help us to understand better how the human moving apparatus works — a complicated task.

“If we can make a robot hand operate like ours then it opens up all sorts of possibilities for artificial limbs.

“It would also mean a robot that moved like a person could take over some of the jobs done by people where human hands are needed.”

The multi-million pound project has had 25 scientists working round-the-clock for three years.

It was partially funded by private enterprise and with two million euros from EU coffers.
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While this is all very exciting, I’d much rather a robot that could assist me in daily activities. A robot that has muscles and can learn from its mistakes sounds more like something prehistoric that I gain nothing from. Okay, Okay. This is pretty amazing, but I’d be willing to be that he isn’t quite as talented as The Terminator, like they mentioned. I mean, would you trust your life with Ecci?