Posted on 10/18/2006 3:48:09 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
Scientists from the Korean Institute for Industrial Technology recently unveiled a new android capable of showing expressions on her face, only the second android to do this after Japan's Actroid. The Ever-1 takes its name from the Biblical Eve plus the r from "robot", can understand about 400 words and make eye contact while talking. We have to confess that we don't really care about any of this, only that we're looking forward to the day that Korea and Japan get both their androids to the point where they can, you know, fight each other. With lasers and missiles, even.
Korea's Second Humanoid Robot to Sing for Fans
The world’s first celebrity robot Ever-2 Muse will soon make “her” public debut. Ever-2 will perform a new ballad titled “I’ll close my eyes” at the opening ceremony of Robot World 2006 at COEX on Wednesday, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said. The robot can be thought of as the little sister of Ever-1, which debuted on May 4 as the first domestic humanoid robot. Ever-2’s skin is produced with silicon. It has some 60 motors in the face (23), neck (three), arms (six each), hands (four each) and lower body (12), allowing a wide range of actions and expressions.
The robot can express 13 consonants and vowels and can not only lip-synch but can dance to music and hold “conversations” with fans. Since it senses colors and movement, it can respond based on the reactions of those nearby. Baeg Moon-hong, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, says Ever-1 with 35 motors was able to express the four emotions of happiness, sadness, excitement and anger, but Ever-2 can express eight, adding fright, discomfort, interest and boredom. Ever-2 is 165 cm-tall, 5 cm taller than its predecessor, and at 60 kg weighs 10 kg more
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200610/200610180027.html
Well, it would be a perfect solution for NK Kim security problems with body doubles. Nothing's easier than to program a robot to make body sounds and to emanate meaningless garbage in the right and proper PC [whatever is PC there] vocabulary. Come to think of it, we must already have a bunch of robots in the places like "social studies departments".
Ping
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