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This story is from the category Artificial Intelligence
Date posted: 08/08/2010 Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro has just unveiled a new teleoperated android: a strange robotic creature called the Telenoid R1. Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University, is famous for creating humanlike androids designed to "transmit the presence" of people to a distant place. His previous remote controlled androids include a robot replica of himself that he named Geminoid HI-1 and a smiling female android called the Geminoid F. But the new Telenoid R1 robot is quite different. The previous androids had lifelike appearances, every detail trying to reproduce the features of a real person. The Telenoid has a minimalistic design. The size of small child, it has a soft torso with a bald head, a doll-like face, and stumps in place of limbs. It looks like an overgrown fetus. Ishiguro and his collaborators say the idea was to create a teleoperated robot that could appear male or female, old or young, and that could be easily transported. The new design pushes the envelope of human-robot interaction, and Ishiguro is certainly not afraid of exploring the depths of the uncanny valley. The researchers, who demonstrated the robot today at a press conference in Osaka, hope it will be used as a new communication device, with applications in remote work, remote education, and elderly care. The goal of the project, a collaboration between Osaka University and Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, known as ATR, is to investigate the essential elements for representing and transmitting humanlike presence. See the full Story via external site: spectrum.ieee.org Most recent stories in this category (Artificial Intelligence): 11/06/2013: When Will My Computer Understand Me? |
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