Annalee Call from Alien Ressurection
Posted on 07/27/2005 11:51:46 AM PDT by WaveMan
Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised - a "female" android called Repliee Q1.
She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.
She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.
Professor Hiroshi Ishiguru of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.
Repliee Q1 is not like any robot you will have seen before, at least outside of science-fiction movies.
She is designed to look human and although she can only sit at present, she has 31 actuators in her upper body, powered by a nearby air compressor, programmed to allow her to move like a human.
"I have developed many robots before," Repliee Q1's designer, Professor Ishiguru, told the BBC News website, "but I soon realised the importance of its appearance. A human-like appearance gives a robot a strong feeling of presence."
Designed to look human
Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguru developed Repliee R1 which had the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl.
Its head could move in nine directions and it could gesture with its arm. Four high-sensitivity tactile sensors were placed under the skin of its left arm that made the android react differently to differing pressures.
The follow-up has the appearance of a Japanese woman. To program her motion, a computer analysed the motions of a human and used them as a template for the way Repliee Q1 moves.
She can be designed to follow the movement of a human wearing motion sensors or to act independently.
"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."
Professor Ishiguru believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.
"An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said.
"More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman."
Annalee Call from Alien Ressurection
good - not yet... wait, is this that loopy rocketeer-club show? huh.
I just set the Tivo -- there's an episode on at 10, and another at 10:30...
Not hardly.
The only problem was that I had to reschedule my recording of "Good Eats" to 2 & 2:30 (not that it matters -- I'm just hoping whatever thunderstorm is on the way (there's lots of lightning on the northwest horizon) doesn't zot my Tivo while it's trying to record)...
what I meant is what is on now. launching small houses... wierd, but looks like fun.
good luck with the weather
The picture shows up here, I guess the firewall at work blocked it there. So it goes...
In any event, I would not have recognized it anyway, so RF may be right about how few of you all know the movie.
I already know of a company that's working on it.
She's a small wonder
Pretty and bright with soft curls
She's a small wonder
A girl unlike unlike other girls
She's a miracle, and I grant you
She'll enchant you at her sight
She's a small wonder
And she'll make your heart take flight
She's fantastic, made of plastic
Microchips here and there
She's a small wonder
Brings love and laughter everywhere
Indeed. Everybody hates it just because it doesn't have Michael Myers in it. I actually like it best next to the original because of it. It's just so odd, everything is so 'off' by a hair that it makes it creepy. I recognize it's a pretty bad movie in most ways, but I love it anyway.
Anyhow, it was the most obscure robot chick reference I could think of.
Linux required for redheads.
maybe it (she?) should be called a gyndroid.
That will be humiliating to the jocks, to be bested by a hunk built by pencil necked geeks.
They will certainly integrate random number generators into her. "She'll throw shadows at you, but she's always a gyndroid to me." (Apologies to Billy Joel)
Who says the logic has to physically live on the gyndroid module? Control it from a room stuffed with a Beowulf cluster.
That's why I never volunteer for beta testing.
"It's not about robots....it's about cloning."
I love it. Very insightful.
ROFLMAO. I'd hit it.
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