Latest Episode
Play

Go Back   Keith and The Girl Forums Keith and The Girl Forums HUAR! Command Center

HUAR! Command Center HUAR! news

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-21-2006, 08:53 AM   #1 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
scottperezfox's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Brooklyn
Posts: 384
Japanese Android Clone

KYOTO, Japan -- Hiroshi Ishiguro is a busy man. Between his two jobs, countless meetings and presentations, his demanding schedule was eating up all his time. So he built an android version of himself to pick up the slack.


Click here to see photos of the android
Ishiguro, a senior researcher at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories outside Kyoto, has created a machine in his own image -- a robot that looks and moves exactly like him. It sits on a chair and gazes around the room in a very humanlike fashion, just like its creator. In fact, the robot is an exact duplicate.

Ishiguro's silicone-and-steel doppelgnger was made from casts taken from his own body. Powered by pressurized air and small actuators, it runs on semiautonomous motion programs.

It blinks and fidgets in its seat, moving its foot up and down restlessly, its shoulders rising gently as though it were breathing. These micromovements are so convincing that it's hard to believe this is a machine -- it seems more like a man wearing a rubber mask. But a living, breathing man.

But "Geminoid HI-1," as the robot is called, has another trick up its sleeve.
"Everyone, thank you so much for coming today," it says in polite but languid Japanese at an ATR demo Thursday, its lips moving to the sound. The voice is Ishiguro's, broadcast through a speaker inside his android double.

Geminoid can be operated remotely so the robot reproduces the voice, posture and lip movements of Ishiguro, who wears a motion-capture system. A mouseclick raises a hand or finger.

Ishiguro, whose job is teaching at Osaka University, an hour's drive away, designed Geminoid so he could "robot in" to his classes and skip the commute. As he steps out from behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz, standing beside his robot self, the shift is disconcerting.

"The idea is tele-interaction," says Ishiguro, who is also head of the university's Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. "If I access the android through the internet, I do not need to go to ATR anymore."

Ishiguro said he wants the robot to have sonzai-kan, or presence. His group will try to quantify the elusive quality that makes people sit up and take notice, and figure out how it can be captured and transmitted.

"I want to check whether students, as well as my family, can feel my presence through Geminoid," says Ishiguro, who seems perfectly at ease with his new twin.

Geminoid already has a palpable gravitas that comes across when chatting to Ishiguro through the android, and one hesitates to even poke the machine's rubbery hands and cheeks.

Ishiguro's droid-making expertise derives in part from his collaboration with Tokyo robotics and entertainment firm Kokoro, whose "Actroid" android receptionists interacted with visitors to Japan's 2005 Aichi Expo in four languages. The partnership produced "Repliee Q1expo," a sophisticated female android that was built by "copying" an actual TV newscaster. Like Geminoid, Repliee could fool onlookers and be mistaken for a real person.
But why bother to build robots that look like humans? Ishiguro views machines as good vehicles to learn more about human nature. He combines engineering with cognitive science with the aim of making very humanlike robots, which can be used as test beds for theories about human perception, communication and cognition. He calls his approach "android science."

"A robot is a kind of simulator for expressing human functions, especially the cerebellum or the muscles," says Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR lab that developed Geminoid. "It's a kind of ultimate human interface."

Aside from improving his android's lip synchronization and developing autonomous control of eye gaze, Ishiguro wants to start interacting with students through Geminoid.

The research might lead to better humanoid robots, or possibly even open up a market of remote androids for hire -- rent a robot in Paris or Pago Pago, have real-world interaction with friends through it, and never leave home. Ishiguro, naturally, has already thought of this: "If I could have one at the university, and one at ATR, I would just do all my work from a hot-springs resort," he laughs.

- - -
Tim Hornyak, based in Tokyo, is author of Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots.
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2006, 01:06 PM   #2 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
benjita's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Michigan's Middle Finger
Posts: 693
If you're going to make an android, why make one look just like you? Just get that girl robot.
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2006, 01:45 PM   #3 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
ryanknapper's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Posts: 822
Quote:
Originally Posted by benjita
If you're going to make an android, why make one look just like you?
So I don't have to go to work?
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2006, 02:02 PM   #4 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
benjita's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Michigan's Middle Finger
Posts: 693
Quote:
Originally Posted by ryanknapper
So I don't have to go to work?
That reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes series where he had like 7 clones, and they rebelled against him because he chilled while they did all the work.

They're going to rebel....

(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-25-2006, 09:28 AM   #5 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
perclissigi's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: London, England
Posts: 256
I just read about this.
Holy.
Shit.
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-25-2006, 09:34 AM   #6 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 2,120
Fuck.

I just added a HUAR comment to the thread.
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-30-2006, 07:49 AM   #7 (permalink)
Junior Member
 
Molly's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: Maryland
Posts: 4
great. so after you run from the robots, you go to a human for help. wait, thats not a human...
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Old 07-31-2006, 06:49 AM   #8 (permalink)
Senior Member
 
klang's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: There is something rotten in the state of Denmark
Posts: 481
Quote:
Originally Posted by benjita
If you're going to make an android, why make one look just like you? Just get that girl robot.
agreed!
(Offline)   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are Off



All times are GMT -5. The time now is 04:33 AM.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
SEO by vBSEO 3.6.1
Keith and The GirlAd Management plugin by RedTyger