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who doesn't.SpaceCDT said:I want a sexbot!
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.)O( Hytegia )O( said: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.
:[
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.Duvelthehobbit666 said:who doesn't.SpaceCDT said:I want a sexbot!
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 said:
lrkun said:Would you allows something like that to take care of your kid?
nasher168 said:lrkun said: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).
* 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 said:
Exmortis said:lrkun said:
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!!!
It's not yet dead. I just haven't found something worth posting which is related to the theme.)O( Hytegia )O( said:
>Dead.lrkun said:... I just haven't found something worth posting which is related to the theme.