Article

2006-10-07 China-Japan-Koreas

The Latest In Japanese Fembot Tech (videos)

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-10-07 14:10|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Big deal. But, on the other hand, I'll be very interested when they finally come up with cat (bad)girls.

Posted by anonymous5089 2006-10-07 15:21|| 2006-10-07 15:21|| Front Page Top

#2 Westworld here we come.

Posted by Steve White">Steve White 2006-10-07 16:43|| 2006-10-07 16:43|| Front Page Top

#3 mechanized hookers? damn. Where do you swipe the ATM card?

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-10-07 17:32|| 2006-10-07 17:32|| Front Page Top

#4 Where do you swipe the ATM card?

Do you REALLY want a straight answer? This is a family blog, after all.

Posted by anonymous5089 2006-10-07 17:45|| 2006-10-07 17:45|| Front Page Top

#5 There is a really good question about what you would do with a humanoid android. Since ordinary tasks can be done better and cheaper by either people or non-humanoid robots.

There is no inherent advantage to a humanoid appearance, except when you want it to interact with humans.

Unless there turns out to be some previously unknown facet of the human psyche that rejects non-humanoid robots, it would probably be far more useful to make robots that look like exotic space aliens.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-10-07 18:55|| 2006-10-07 18:55|| Front Page Top

#6 It's a free-standing animatronic, not really a robot. Disney's had fixed-location animatronics for decades, and a free-standing one (not human, but a dinosaur) for a few years.

Posted by Rob Crawford">Rob Crawford 2006-10-07 19:12|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2006-10-07 19:12|| Front Page Top

#7 There is no inherent advantage to a humanoid appearance, except when you want it to interact with humans.

The Japanese have been at the forefront of a part of Artificial Intelligence that involves inferring emotion and meaning from body language and expression as well as from spoken words.

This demo is just that - a demo. The facial expressions are quite good, actually, but the real story here is the underlying work in AI.

Consider that being able to replicate lifelike expression appropriate to verbal meaning is just the flip side of recognizing it in humans. Which means the ability to create AI agents embodied in robots and other systems which can better serve humans by inferring their intent.

In a rapidly aging population with few children, the Japanese are seriously looking to robotics to provide help and care for the elderly. Old folks don't want care from a tin can on wheels, they will want to interact with something that at least gives the similitude of human expression.

As an aside, my own research includes work in AI as it applies to understanding human language. When you and I speak or write, we use metaphors, short-hand phrases, sometimes we deliberately (in puns) or inadvertently use ambiguous wording. It's features like that that make natural language processing a hard problem.

The sub-field of AI that looks at expressions and body language as augmenting verbal communication is one way of making natural language understanding by software agents a little more accurate.

steps down and apologetically puts soap box away then slips into the crowd again

Posted by lotp 2006-10-07 19:29|| 2006-10-07 19:29|| Front Page Top

#8 mechanized hookers? damn. Where do you swipe the ATM card?

I'm sure they'll provide a slot somewhere.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-10-07 21:31|| 2006-10-07 21:31|| Front Page Top

#9 What? No one's mentioned Cherry 2000, yet?

Posted by .com 2006-10-07 21:32|| 2006-10-07 21:32|| Front Page Top

#10 Woah...man hands!

Posted by tu3031 2006-10-07 22:11|| 2006-10-07 22:11|| Front Page Top

#11 LOL .com, I was tempted! But would have to say close, but no cigar. ;-)

Posted by twobyfour 2006-10-07 22:12|| 2006-10-07 22:12|| Front Page Top

23:57 Ernest Brown
23:56 Zenster
23:55 newc
23:54 newc
23:53 Zenster
23:52 newc
23:51 Zenster
23:51 NoBeards
23:48 Zenster
23:44 Zenster
23:43 phil_b
23:42 Jan
23:36 Pappy
23:30 phil_b
23:30 anon
23:28 Jan
23:25 Zenster
23:13 Ernest Brown
23:08 DMFD
22:59 Zenster
22:37 .com
22:36 .com
22:22 tu3031
22:22 hutchrun