Zeno

Hanson Robotics

China

Product Page

Zeno is Hanson Robotics' child-like research humanoid, dated 2013 in the company's catalogue and built specifically for autism therapy research and human-robot interaction studies. He is deliberately designed to look approachable rather than impressive: a small, child-proportioned figure with an expressive face, intended to put children and research participants at ease. Hanson positions his expressive capability and friendly appearance as what makes him suitable for therapeutic and educational settings, and the catalogue lists his strengths as autism therapy, being child-friendly, emotion detection, interactive learning and research applications. Zeno belongs to the same family as Sophia and the rest of the Hanson fleet, which the company says all use its proprietary Frubber skin to produce lifelike facial expressions. He remains listed in Hanson Robotics' current robot catalogue, although the company has no dedicated product page for him and its current commercial focus is the Sophia Robot™ Utility platform.