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Hanson Robotics Limited develops humanlike robots with artificial intelligence for consumer, entertainment, service, healthcare, and research applications. The company is based in Hong Kong and was founded by Dr. David Hanson who is the also Chief Executive Officer of the company.

The company aims to create intelligent and empathetic robots that teach, serve, entertain, and provide comforting companionship.

The lifelike appearance and behavior of Hanson robots spring from a combination of robotic technology, skin technology, character design/animation, and artificial intelligence. For its human-scale robots, the company uses a patented nanotech skin that resembles human skin in its feel and flexibility, and proprietary motor control systems that enable the robots to convey a range of human emotions. Dr. David Hanson is an acknowledged leader in humanlike facial robotics. The company’s artificial intelligence software collets emotional and visual data that provide social insights.

History
The company was founded in Hong Kong on December 9, 2013 by Dr. David Hanson. In October 2016, it was selected as one of 9 companies to join the Disney Accelerator program.

Products
The company develops a number of humanlike, character robots. The company's latest robot creation, Sophia, made her debut at the South by Southwest show in March 2016, with her interview by CNBC reaching a broad audience. Since then, she has become a global media personality, having conducted numerous press interviews and appeared on broadcast television shows including CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon , Good Morning Britain. She has also been a keynote and panel speaker at many global conferences and events, including those hosted by ITU, United Nations. Sophia was featured in AUDI’s annual report and graced the cover and centerfold of ELLE Magazine.

Hanson Robotics' robots were shown first at the 2002 AAAI conference in Edmonton, Canada, and in 2003, and at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting. In 2005, Hanson and team received an AAAI award for their "intelligent conversational portrait" of Philip K. Dick [AI Magazine, Fall 2005]. First shown at the 2005 Nextfest, the robot incorporated thousands of pages of the writings of PKD, including journals and letters, into an LSA corpus and conversational system construct android.

In November 2005, Hanson demonstrated an expressive walking humanoid, a portrait of Albert Einstein, in collaboration with the KAIST Hubo group of Korea. KAIST built the walking body, and Hanson built the head using elastic polymer called Frubber.

Other robots include Joey Chaos, Jules (created for University of West England in Bristol, UK) and Alice (created for MIRALab in Geneva, Switzerland). He developed BINA48 for Martine Rothblatt's Terasem Movement, which he unveiled in 2010.

Commercial applications
The company aims to disrupt the consumer and commercial robotics market with affordable robots that have high-quality expressions and verbal and nonverbal interactivity. This enables the robots to engage in rich emotional dialogs with people, conveying and perceiving feelings along with thoughts, and over time develop deep and meaningful relationships with humans.

Hanson robots have immediate applications as media personalities in movies and TV shows, entertainment animatronics in museums and theme parks, and for university research and medical training applications. The Company will be introducing a new range of robots that will entertain, educate, and enrich the lives of mass consumers, as well as serve businesses and delight their customers in a broad variety of commercial applications, including building traffic and promoting products and services in retail, tradeshows, auto showrooms, and banks, and entertaining and guiding customers in hotels, shopping outlets and malls, and residential developments. Their engaging expressiveness and conversational abilities, combined with empathetic AI, will empower the robots to be likeable, perceptive, and trusted companions for the humans whose lives they touch.