Grace

Grace is what happens when Hanson points its face-making at a problem instead of a stage. Introduced in 2020–21 by Awakening Health — a joint venture between Hanson Robotics and Ben Goertzel's SingularityNET — she is a female-presenting humanoid built for eldercare and healthcare, conceived during the COVID-19 isolation crisis.

What she does

Under Hanson's Frubber skin, 48-plus facial actuators give Grace a soft, expressive face; she has collar-length brown hair, wears blue scrubs, and speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese. A thermal camera in her chest reads temperature and responsiveness, she can take basic vitals and relay them to caregivers, and she rolls between patients on a wheeled mobile base. But the real job is social: she has been trialled in long-term care homes specifically to ease the loneliness that hits isolated and elderly patients hardest, with published case work studying her as an intervention. The trilingual design is deliberate — Awakening Health pitched Grace at the greying populations of Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan and Korea, where the carer shortage is sharpest.

The honesty

Grace is a prototype, not a product. You cannot buy one; a 2022 report put the build cost near $35,000 per unit, with mass production promised but never delivered at scale. She does not walk. Her "diagnosis" is screening, not medicine. And the same overselling that dogs Sophia applies here — treat the autonomy and clinical claims as claims, not capabilities.

Why she scores 42

A notch above Sophia on our index. Grace carries the same lifelike, expressive Hanson face, but mounts it on a mobile full body with working hands and a clear, gentle purpose, rather than a static show-torso. She is still near-zero on locomotion and nowhere near a convincing human mind; the cloud "intelligence" is conversation and screening, not judgement. What Grace gets right is exactly what eldercare needs — a warm, patient, attentive face that shows up every day, never tires and never looks bored — which is a more honest use of Hanson's craft than any stage ever was.