Androids that look human

[scalyblue]

 

[SpaceCDT]

I want a sexbot!

 

[lrkun]

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

I want a sexbot!

who doesn't.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

We know that it's a robot - because it is not behaving or looking like a human.
It's probably the smaller things, more than the obvious ones - her lips aren't moving realistically to match the words. There's no emotion in her face. It's... Sadly evident that this is not human.
:[

Yeah... there are better examples of realism out there as of more recent developments, but you're right that it's always those little things like lip movements and gesturing and so on that give it away. That's the nature of the uncanny valley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7tYwnqot6M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RksP_gAqSh0

I want a sexbot!

who doesn't.

While they're not yet at the point where you can purchase sexbots, there are already widely talked about examples of realistic sex dolls. A number of radio shows, to say nothing of sites like cracked.com brought it up specifically on the topic of the uncanny valley as it so happens. Now obviously, being a doll means it doesn't actually do anything, but the fact that there's already a company making and selling these for around $6,000 pretty well says how many people would make the same response of "who doesn't?". If we get to the point of actual sexbots, then I think you're talking the downfall of society. People will just have endless sex according to their own free whims (much like the Star Trek holodeck would also do). And when you think about it, $6-10k is a lot cheaper than any real woman.

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Now, something like that picture above... you'd probably see something pretty fake about it if you saw it directly or saw a video. But with a still image, you don't get that much info, and it therefore also looks that much more realistic. Also given the fact that we're pretty accustomed to seeing photos of models which have been airbrushed and retouched, the fact that it looks "too perfect" is also passable. When I first saw it, if I wasn't seeing it in the context of something about the uncanny valley, I probably would have believed that it was an airbrushed photo of an actual person.

 

[lrkun]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/humanoids/hiroshi-ishiguro-the-man-who-made-a-copy-of-himself

Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist at Osaka University, in Japan, has, as you might expect, built many robots. But his latest aren't run-of-the-mill automatons. Ishiguro's recent creations look like normal people. One is an android version of a middle-aged family man,himself.

Ishiguro constructed his mechanical doppelgänger using silicone rubber, pneumatic actuators, powerful electronics, and hair from his own scalp. The robot, like the original, has a thin frame, a large head, furrowed brows, and piercing eyes that, as one observer put it, "seem on the verge of emitting laser beams." The android is fixed in a sitting posture, so it can't walk out of the lab and go fetch groceries. But it does a fine job of what it's intended to do: mimic a person.


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Ishiguro controls this robot remotely, through his computer, using a microphone to capture his voice and a camera to track his face and head movements. When Ishiguro speaks, the android reproduces his intonations; when Ishiguro tilts his head, the android follows suit. The mechanical Ishiguro also blinks, twitches, and appears to be breathing, although some human behaviors are deliberately suppressed. In particular, when Ishiguro lights up a cigarette, the android abstains.

It's the perfect tool for Ishiguro's field of research: human-robot interaction, which is as much a study of people as it is of robots. "My research question is to know what is a human," he tells me between spoonfuls of black sesame ice cream at an Osaka diner. "I use very humanlike robots as test beds for my hypotheses",hypotheses about human nature, intelligence, and behavior.

Robots, Ishiguro and others say, are poised to move from factories into daily life. The hope is that robots will one day help people with a multitude of tasks,they'll do household chores, care for the elderly, assist with physical therapy, monitor the sick at hospitals, teach classes, serve cappuccinos at Starbucks, you name it. But to be accepted in these roles, robots may have to behave less like machines and more like us.

Researchers have, of course, long been interested in making robots look and act more like human beings. Among the most notable efforts in this regard are Waseda University's Wabot, MIT's Cog, NASA's Robonaut, Sarcos's Sarcoman, the Toyota partner robots, Japan's METI HRP series, Sony's Qrio, and perhaps most famous of all, Honda's Asimo.

These robots are all mechanical looking, Ishiguro says, but our brains are wired to relate to other humans,we're optimized for human-human, not human-Asimo, interaction. That's why he builds robots that look like people, as part of his work at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, known as ATR, where he's a visiting group leader. To describe an android copy of a particular individual, he coined the term "geminoid," after geminus, which is Latin for twin. He named his mechanical brother Geminoid HI-1.

By building humanlike robots Ishiguro hopes to decipher what the Japanese call sonzaikan,the feeling of being in the presence of a human being. Where does the sense of humanness come from? And can you convey those qualities with a robot?

The idea of connecting a person's brain so intimately with a remotely controlled body seems straight out of science fiction. In The Matrix, humans control virtual selves. In Avatar, the controlled bodies are alien-human hybrids. In the recent Bruce Willis movie Surrogates, people control robot proxies sent into the world in their places. Attentive viewers will notice that Ishiguro and the Geminoid have cameo roles, appearing in a TV news report on the rapid progress of "robotic surrogacy."

Ishiguro's surrogate doesn't have sensing and actuation capabilities as sophisticated as those in the movie. But even this relatively simple android is giving Ishiguro great insight into how our brains work when we come face to face with a machine that looks like a person. He's also investigating, with assistance from cognitive scientists, how the operator's brain behaves. Teleoperating the android can be so immersive that strange things happen. Simply touching the android is enough to trigger a physical sensation in him, Ishiguro says, almost as though he were inhabiting the robot's body.

 

[Laurens]

Creepy as hell...

 

[lrkun]

Creepy as hell...

Would you allows something like that to take care of your kid?

 

[nasher168]

Would you allows something like that to take care of your kid?

If it was actually intelligent and capable, I think I would. But I would probably prefer a less human-looking robot. A robot that is obviously a robot in accordance with Lyuben Dilov's so-called "fourth law":
"A robot must establish its identity as a robot in all cases."

Simply having a halo wouldn't really do it, because as is pointed out in that anime series (can't remember what its called), such a device could be turned off or removed altogether. And it would of course remain firmly in uncanny valley.
Having robots appear obviously robotic seems the simplest way to have them obey the fourth law, and it wouldn't reduce the amount of trust we give them (in fact, it might improve our relationships with them).

 

[lrkun]

Would you allows something like that to take care of your kid?

If it was actually intelligent and capable, I think I would. But I would probably prefer a less human-looking robot. A robot that is obviously a robot in accordance with Lyuben Dilov's so-called "fourth law":
"A robot must establish its identity as a robot in all cases."

Simply having a halo wouldn't really do it, because as is pointed out in that anime series (can't remember what its called), such a device could be turned off or removed altogether. And it would of course remain firmly in uncanny valley.
Having robots appear obviously robotic seems the simplest way to have them obey the fourth law, and it wouldn't reduce the amount of trust we give them (in fact, it might improve our relationships with them).

I see. I hold a different opinion on the matter. I'd like to have an android that looks human as a partner in these sort of things. ^^ hehe.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

The way I see it, there probably are functional purposes to having robots resemble actual living things. There's certainly no need for a robot which serves some assembly line function to look like a factory worker... but then robots that are supposed to serve social functions like that Actroid or serve as direct human analogs like Ishiguro's design... or yes, even sexbots, which will definitely exist at some point... That's where having robots that look human is definitely valuable.

That's aside from the research value of being able to simulate emotions and social interactions and being able to further refine algorithms in various ways which also provides a lot of insight into human intelligence as well. I know it seems at times like projects like Kismet seem very primitive on the surface, but the effect that they have is actually quite measurable. The real sophistication in those projects is at a very deep-down level, e.g. in vision and object recognition as well as facial expression reading and so on... the robots thus far shown in the thread have far more mechanical and physical sophistication, and you'll need to go a few levels further in all aspects, but passable product is quite doable.

While I'm still on the topic of sexbots, I would add that technology-wise, we're already there. We can already make pretty realistic full-body movement (even if a robot built in that shape may not be able to stand up properly), and the technology exists to make a form that is very believable... it's not exactly going to be flawless, but for the market you're looking at, it really only needs to be good enough. I think the major barriers are consistent manufacturing in sufficient volume that you can make it affordable. Most of the people who would buy such a thing will be in middle-class range, and so you need to be able to price it in that level. Realistic dolls like the ones I posted about earlier are already in the thousands of dollars, but part of that is that they are not made in high volume and are apparently made to order. The only reason they're only in the thousands and not tens of thousands as they are is because it's apparently still based on a handful of pre-defined molds and it still uses relatively inexpensive materials -- most likely aluminium frames and latex/silicone for the body.

 

[lrkun]

sweet.

 

[lrkun]

space launch and robonaut

* R2 will be the first humanoid robot in space. It is designed to show how dexterous robots cope in a weightless environment
* After upgrades and advancements, Nasa hopes R2 can venture outside the space station to help astronauts on spacewalkers
* The expectation is that R2-like robots could one day go into orbit to service communications and scientific satellites
* Similar robots might be sent on deep space missions, where they would experience more extreme thermal and radiation conditions
* Humanoid robots could also help set up Mars camps before astronauts arrive, and maintain the surface experiments after they leave

 

[lrkun]

^-^ I like.

 

[lrkun]

It's a little off the mark, but the experement is still interesting.

 

[Exmortis]

Ahhh!

I call lip-synch...!

I so-ooo call lip-synching...!


Look closely guys...


That robot isn't really singing...

She is just mouthing the words...


She is a...

FAKE!!!

 

[lrkun]

Ahhh!

I call lip-synch...!

I so-ooo call lip-synching...!


Look closely guys...


That robot isn't really singing...

She is just mouthing the words...


She is a...

FAKE!!!

Seeing as someone posted in this thread, I thought it was something meaningful or worth reading. And now, having read your reply, I can only say this: it's a robot. @.@ what do you expect?

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

 

[lrkun]

It's not yet dead. I just haven't found something worth posting which is related to the theme.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

... I just haven't found something worth posting which is related to the theme.

>Dead.