When you think of robots acting in the movies you probably imagine animations made by AI, or CGI or even actors in costumes, right! But Netflix decided to do something different in the adaptation of the famous Electric State comic, instead of Pixels they preferred to go for something real and thus Cosmo was born, a little robot full of personality that is already conquering almost everyone.

The big surprise is that it is a real robbery, there is nothing CGI in this story, to create Cosmo Netflix did not call traditional studios special defects, they looked for the robotics laboratory at the University of California, one of the most advanced in the United States, the mission was to create in just 8 months a functional robot that could act on stage alongside real actors with natural movements and its own personality, except that Cosmo is not exactly a traditional robbery.

His appearance is directly inspired by the original comics, a giant yellow ball-shaped head, huge boots and a small body, proportions that do not facilitate traditional robotic engineering at all, yet the team accepted the challenge and got to work.

Beneath its fun and colorful appearance, Cosmo is a true technological masterpiece, it has 28 degrees of freedom and that means it can perform very complex and detailed movements, there are five joints in each leg, four in each arm, articulated fingers even, two joints in the neck for some human-like expressions and so that it can balance with that giant head the engineers developed a special system with advanced sensors and compact actuators.

Just to give you an idea, he can walk at a speed of 1 meter per second, even if he carries that big hat on his neck, but it was a huge challenge to get there, Cosmo's movements couldn't simply be copied by humans through motion capture because he has a very different structure, so every step, every gesture and every expression was manually adjusted by the engineers until everything looked alive and real.

Now what is most impressive about Cosmo is not just the fact that it can walk or pick up objects, it is the way it interacts and communicates emotions: 16 tiny motors inside that big head control every micro expression, all to generate that pleasant feeling that the robot is really alive, almost like a cartoon character from the 90s, it also has a coil on its chest where it plays its pre-recorded lines.

Of course, Netflix wanted a fun star in the movie, but the creators of Cosmo see much greater potential in it. The technologies that allowed the creation of this complex and expressive robot can be used for multiple real applications such as mascots in theme parks, theft of customer service or even research into intelligent prostheses.

The creation of Cosmo shows how robotics is rapidly evolving so quickly that it is now possible to bring characters from comics directly into the real world in just a few months.

I leave you the trailer of the film, so you can see it if you like this type of genre, but personally I recommend it, the actress who customized 11 in the successful series Stranger Things and the actor who plays Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy works.

Sorry for my Ingles, it's not my main language. The images were taken from the sources used.