Subscribe by email
The androids are here
Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human. He said this at the unveiling Repliee Q1, a female android, said to be "the most human-looking robot yet devised".
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.
"I have developed many robots before," Prof Ishiguro, 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."
He said 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."
He added 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.
[That's enough time for me, Prof.]
MORE.
posted by Julian | 7/28/2005 10:30:00 PM
1 Comments:
Keen-eyed analysis and well-argued critique. Had you really wanted to hit the snot out of this one, however, you might have gone the whole, sledgehammery hog and noted: a) the disconcerting robotic intonation of Ms. Stout's (Ms. Lu Stout? Ms. Stout, Lu?); b) that even more irritating "Agent Scully" New England snob lisp she's got going; c) the idea that Christianne Anamwhatever is a dead-ringer for a cartoon vulture; and d) that in addition to being a journalistically under-qualified equal op hire filling an "alernative sexuality" quota, Becky Anderson is also the first known TV hag stricken with massive Parkinsons convulsions (fucking woman looks like she's flinching from some fatal gunshot to the face). Though entirely unrelated, it might also be noted that if one were to melt down and mix the gelatinously inert Johnathan Mann and the uber freak Richard Quest, the clashes of extremes might produce a normal human you wouldn't want to kill.
Post a Comment
<< Home