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Technology Science

A New Face For Robotics 219

Posted by timothy from the eerie dept.
tanmay writes "Android technology has moved a step forward with the creation of a high-tech polymer called 'f'rubber,' which resembles human skin. Its creator, David Hanson has implemented it in a robot called Hertz, as this report from CNN gives us the details. Another question that the report brings up is the need to make robots resemble humans. Ray Kurzweil thinks Hanson's work is significant because realistic facial movement will play an important role in the way future androids respond to humans, and has the following to say, 'Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing.'"
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A New Face For Robotics More

A New Face For Robotics

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  • Frubber? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:12PM (#8232993) Homepage Journal
    Does it make you fly? Or bounce like a super-hero?

  • Looks pretty good... (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:13PM (#8232998) Homepage Journal

    That "f'rubber" looks pretty good in the initial testing phases. Not 100% human-like [sltrib.com] but close.

  • $100... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:13PM (#8232999)

    ...says that the first practical use of f'rubber will be in the sex aid industry. How long before we see Stepford Whores?

  • Disturbing? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:13PM (#8233001)
    "Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing." Put a blond wig an silicone breasts on it, and it not quite so disturbing...

  • Too close to human? (Score:5, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:14PM (#8233011) Journal
    The question is, do they dream of electronic sheep?

    -Charles

  • mmm wire. (Score:5, Funny)

    by 0x12d3 ( 623370 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:15PM (#8233020)
    If you're lucky enough to meet her, try to ignore the tangle of wires slinking from behind her face. Ignore?!? hell it turns me on!! Grrrrr.

  • The Uncanny Valley (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UtilityFog ( 654576 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:16PM (#8233027) Homepage
    The "Uncanny Valley" is a neologism that expresses RK's statement. It's reasonably new in robotics research, as they've only recently gotten to the point where it can apply. See, e.g., http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html ... It's just a hope, of course, that it actually comes up on the other side!

    • Which Side? Re:The Uncanny Valley (Score:4, Interesting)

      by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:32PM (#8233142) Homepage Journal
      I think that lifelike rubber skin is an attempt to push robots up the slope of the *right* side of the valley, toward human realism.

      This is going to be really tough.

      I would push the other way, toward "unfamiliar but intriguing." Make them clean and symmetrical, out of shiny materials.

      Stefan

      • Re:Which Side? Re:The Uncanny Valley (Score:5, Insightful)

        by The Only Druid ( 587299 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:47PM (#8233270)
        Part of the reason designers want human-like robots, is that it helps to mask their ineptness at particular skills. When you see something that is clearly artificial, you immediately summon up a set of presuppositions about their abilities and failings. A similar thing occurs when you go to a movie after being told it contains CGI: you look for any seeming artificiality, and attribute it to CGI (even if, as is often the case in some movies, its not CGI at all).

        For robot designers, then, the goal is to prevent you from associating with their creations those same problems you already associate with artificial intelligence. Instead, they want you to be comfortable with it, but also forgiving in the same way you are with a child or otherwise intellectually lacking individual (assuming they're not an asshole).

        Consider this: suppose, when checking in at the airport, you were greeted by a fembot that seemed entirely human externally. When you speak with her, you may eventually realize she's artificial (assuming you dont notice the dozen other, identical, fembots performing similar tasks for your fellow fliers) but at least at first you're going to forgive her more difficulty ("I'm sorry, could you repeat that?") than you might with a simple computer terminal.

        Of course I'm neither a sociologist nor an engineer, so this is all my interpretation of the situation, as opposed to speaking first-hand.

        That said, I think one of the coolest uses for this will be for prosthetics for humans: imagine if your false hand could look perfect, even if it doesn't move perfectly? Even more extreme, imagine if the fake skin covering a portion of your face (which is attached with careful glues/snaps/etc.) looked entirely realistic?

        • Re:Which Side? Re:The Uncanny Valley (Score:4, Insightful)

          by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2004 @12:23AM (#8234627) Homepage Journal
          Well, they also have to be past the uncanny valley. If they just made robots close to realistic, and ended up in that area, people would go nuts left and right. Imagine if, when checking in at the airport, you suddenly realized that the person behind the counter was a zombie, and, in fact, there are a dozen identical zombies around. Even if you know what's going on, you won't be able to shake the feeling that you're in a horror movie.

          If they built robots in actual human corpses, people would be horrified. If they built robots in bodies that are indistinguishable from human corpses, people wouldn't be able to tell. In order for people to not freak out, they have to think either that the things are real live people or that there isn't a human body involved.

          Even aside from this sort of perception, I think people would be more disturbed to interact with an intellectually lacking individual, particularly one who additionally does not act quite human. Even actual humans with autism or Tourette's tend to disturb people who aren't used to them.
          • If they built robots in actual human corpses, people would be horrified.

            Here's a strange concept. There is a medical condition called anencephaly, where a person is born without a brain. If robot manufacturers wanted to save themselves a lot of manufacturing costs they could tinker with human DNA and grow bodies without brains and then implant robot brains in the empty skulls. You would have a completely realistic robot. If the AI was good enough you would be unable to tell a robot from a human without s

            • This is deep into just surreal joke territory, but I'm reminded of a recent Sealab 2021 episode wherein Doctor Quinn removed the brains of first Capt. Murphy, then the rest of the crew, only to replace their brains with small mice who controlled the bodies via tiny mouse-sized controls (where did the brains go, you ask? Into robots...).
        • Even more extreme, imagine if the fake skin covering a portion of your face (which is attached with careful glues/snaps/etc.) looked entirely realistic?

          Are you suggesting that this guy [bitwaste.com] has hope, after all?

  • Call the lawyers ! (Score:3, Funny)

    by pytheron ( 443963 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:17PM (#8233035) Homepage
    This is clearly a blatant cash-in on the already successful 'flubber' invented by Walt Disney !
    • The guy has worked at Disney, so maybe he has some understanding in place with them, but -- otherwise, he's definitely going to be hearing from their lawyers. Maybe he could claim parody, but if he's marketing the stuff under the f'rubber name, no way is that going to fly.

      By the way, folks, the "Uncanny Valley" idea is explained at some length in the (RTF)A. Kudos to everyone raking in karma by mentioning it anyway, though...

  • Prosthetics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:17PM (#8233040) Journal
    More realistic seeming skin could be a bonus not only for robotics as in AI, but as in prosthetics.

    Artificial limbs can be made to seem more lifelike with such substance, making them less obtrusive for those who use them.

  • Perhaps they shouldn't try so hart to be human... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dr. Zowie ( 109983 ) <slashdot.deforest@org> on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:19PM (#8233052)
    Things that look too human appear grotesque and disturbing, unless they're dead-nuts-on. Apparently there's an uncanny valley [arclight.net] in parameter space, where things that are close to (but not exactly) human are disturbing and grotesque.

  • New Scientist recently covered this as well (Score:5, Informative)

    by another misanthrope ( 688068 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:19PM (#8233054)
    full text here: Follow that human [newscientist.com]


    "Most people doing social robots believe that human faces will turn people off and will disturb them. I think that's ridiculous," Hanson said. "The human face is perhaps the most natural paradigm for us to interact with."

    Most experts disagree. They cite one of the principles of social robotics, the so-called "Uncanny Valley" theory.

    First described by pioneering Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, the theory goes like this: humans have a positive psychological reaction to robots that look somewhat like humans. But if a robot is made to look very realistic but somehow isn't quite right (it has an odd smile, or it doesn't blink, for example) it seems grotesque instead of comforting.

  • Sounds like just the kind of new invetion Abyss Creations [realdoll.com] has been waiting for. ;)

  • Dr. Who (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rlp ( 11898 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:24PM (#8233088)
    A Doctor Who episode The Robots of Death [bbc.co.uk] has a sub-plot involving 'robophobia'. It was a mental (illness) condition broguht on by close contact with entities that looked and acted human but had no emotions or expressions and were impossible for humans to 'read'. Of course, that's fiction. However, in the 1980's car makers added a 'feature' to luxury cars, where the car would 'speak' to the driver and passengers. ("A door is ajar! A door is ajar!"). People hated this, and it was quickly abandoned. I briefly had a rental car with a 'voice' - and found it annoying. I'm not sure that making machines look a little bit human is a good thing.

    • A door is ajar (Score:5, Informative)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:37PM (#8233182) Homepage Journal
      Part of the annoyance was the lack of information - "Door ajar. Door ajar."

      OK, which fscking door is it?!?

      Also, this would start the instant the door was opened with the key in place. Had it dinged a couple of times first, then said "Driver's door ajar" or "Front right door ajar" (or for you who drive on the wrong side of the road, "Front left door ajar" ;) then it might not have been quite so annoying.
      • I had a rental car once that had a 'voice'. I simply found unsolicited speech by a car to be annoying (and I was working on a speech recognition project at that time). The machine starts talking - it has no context. It doesn't know what your doing, whether you're ready to attend to it, or if you already have the information. On my speech recognition project, it seemed more acceptable, because the system was responding to my requests - the information (presented as text-to-speech) was solicited.

      • Re:A door is ajar (Score:4, Funny)

        by K8Fan ( 37875 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @11:18PM (#8234230) Journal

        A friend of mine was a mechanic for a Datsun dealership at the time. As this was long before affordable digital samplers (confined to machines like the Fairlight CMI at the time), the voice was supplied by (believe it or not) a very rugged form of record player. It was made out of a hard plastic and had (I believe) a sapphire needle.

        My friend tired of the English voice, and managed to get replacement "records" for his car. His favorite was the Japanese woman, but he also had a male German voice telling him "Achtung! Die Tur ist angelehnt!"

    • Re:Dr. Who (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lambent ( 234167 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:56PM (#8233326)
      actually ...

      i was lucky enough to be in possession of one of these 'freak' cars for awhile. 1984 Nissan Maxima. Once my friends learned that it 'spoke', they would go to no ends to to hear that metallic (female) voice.

      I loved driving down the highway only to suddenly hear, "right door is open".

      It was the hight of coolness.

      On the otherhand, my fuel gauge was sticky. So, even though I knew I had 2 gallons and ~40 miles left to go, I would be bombarded every 5 minutes with "fuel level is low".

      THAT, the sub-par 'intelligence' that thought that i was the stupid one, was much much worse than the freaky metallic-death drone of my constant female copilot, which was actually pretty kick-ass.

      And don't get me started on that piece-of-shit self-bagger at the grocery store.
    • door is ajar!

      [ob Eddie Murphy reference]
      Hey man! Somebody stole your batt'ry! I say we go get the mothafucka!

    • Anyone else thinking of the Bill Hicks routine where he and his friends borrow his dad's car while they are tripping and it tells them that "the door is a jar"?
  • very realistic Elvis lookalikes.

  • Astro Boy, Ahoy! (Score:4, Informative)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:27PM (#8233107) Homepage Journal
    My parents told me a while back that I was a rabid "Astro Boy"* fan when I was a wee tot. (A translated version of the cartoon played in the 'States in the late 60s.)

    I barely remembered the show . . . but was curious enough after the 50th Anniversary noise last year to pick up the first volume of the collected comics. (I think Dark Horse is publishing them.)

    The B&W art was very stylish and lively, but the stories were kind of juvenile.

    One thing stood out**: In the beginning of the Origin Story, we're shown a brief history of robotics. The big breakthrough that made robots acceptable in everyday life:

    Lifelike rubber skin!

    Stefan

    * Yeah, yeah, his real name is "Mighty Atom."

    ** Well, one other thing stood out. Astro Boy had a machine gun in his butt. Man, that's freaky.

  • PopSci article (Score:5, Informative)

    by FiloEleven ( 602040 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:29PM (#8233120)
    Popular Science has a longer (and IMO better) article [popsci.com] on the entire project. It was written September 2003. It's got interesting information on the "Uncanny Valley" -- robots are okay, unless they look very much but not quite human - they call it "walking corpse." Hanson hopes to get past that valley and build (at least) a head that is a perfect human imitation.

  • Heard Ray speak last week (Score:5, Informative)

    by tundog ( 445786 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:33PM (#8233149) Homepage
    He gave 2-hour talk about the relationship between innovation, AI and biotech.

    The coolest part was that his talk was a virtual talk - he was sitting at his office in Boston and was beamed over to a conference hall with ~2000 people. They had this curtain setup with a translucent concave reception dish that caught a projected video signal - I swear to god, from the back of the room, the only way that you knew he was a hologram and not a real person was that he was 'brighter' than the guy next to him. Even better, was that they had this camera that projected the people speaking onto a huge screen auditorium-type display and when you looked at that there was no way to tell that he wasn't physically there. The only thing that gave him away was the occasionally interrupted audio (must have been VOIP). I don't know if the video signal was analog or digital but I suppose it could have been either.

    The core of his talk was that science in general (and machine AI in particular) is advancing 'exponentially' - that each new innovation provides us with new tools to accelerate progress. Cool shizzle. According to him, we'll see some incredible advances in the next 10 years.

  • Human skin is all well and good, (Score:3, Funny)

    by Killswitch1968 ( 735908 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:33PM (#8233152)
    But can it run a self-diagnostic?
    Does it have an emotion chip?
    Does it have an evil twin?
    Now THAT'S an android.

  • Why bother looking human (Score:4, Insightful)

    by odeee ( 741339 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:33PM (#8233157)
    I don't know why we have an obsession with having our robots look human! In terms of usefulness they would be better off being built in a manner that best suits their purpose, not trying to pretend they're something they're not.

    Consider movies like Toy Story, where they have animated humans that they've tried to make look real... of course it's easy to tell that they are not real, and in fact they have an element of unreality and unbelievability about them. I would connect more with a straight cartoon character, where there is no attempt to make them look real then I would with something that is trying to be real, but isn't quite.
    • On the other hand, Final Fantasy The Spirits Within had some of the most incredible CG humans I've ever seen, and as a result I realized that their human model was a really bad actor, suffering from overdone facial expressions etc.

      Having robots with human features can enhance its ability to communicate. A prof from Carnegie Mellon gave a talk about museum robots [216.239.57.104] who roamed a set area offering tours etc. The robots were more successful in both getting and holding peoples' attention if they were programme

  • trebliD (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:37PM (#8233180) Homepage Journal
    "Its creator, David Hanson has implemented it in a robot called Hertz"

    Hmm Hertz makes for a good last name, but what about a first name? It should be something celestial.. timeless... Oh, I know, how about Uranus?

  • Breaking news: geek gets laid (Score:5, Funny)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:37PM (#8233181)
    We all know the motivation behind robotss that bave skin/body parts that feel more realistic. OTOH, most geeks probably don't have a realistic benchmark to compare to.

  • Uncanny Valley-ness, not F'rubber is the issue. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mynameis (mother ... ( 745416 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:40PM (#8233203)
    The basic problem is should they be really anthropomorphic [reference.com] or not.

    In the article they mention the 'Mori Uncanniness' problem- there is a point that is the 'most anthropomorphic' you can get, before the thing becomes about as pleasant as santorum [spreadingsantorum.com]. IANARS, but the RS's at CMU's Robotics Institute [cmu.edu] state in A Survey of socially interactive robots [cmu.edu]

    [if a robot needs to portray a living creature,] it is critical that an appropriate degree of familiarity be maintained. Mashiro Mori contends that the progression from a non-realistic to realistic portrayal of a living thing is non-linear. In particular, there is an ?uncanny valley? (see Fig. 8) as similarity becomes almost, but not quite perfect. At this point, the subtle imperfections of the recreation become highly disturbing, or even repulsive...

    FWIW There are many more issues than just cannyness, and that paper gets into a lot of em...

      • Mashiro Mori contends that the progression from a non-realistic to realistic portrayal of a living thing is non-linear. In particular, there is an "uncanny valley" as similarity becomes almost, but not quite perfect.

      That's not an original observation. The computer graphics industry struggled with that problem for most of the last decade, and made it out the other side of that valley a few years ago. The better film CG houses have that problem pretty much solved. Game CG is still working on it. It's

  • I'm worried (Score:3, Funny)

    by El ( 94934 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:42PM (#8233214)
    Lifelike skin? As soon as they can program this thing to take out the trash, my girlfriend will no longer have any use for me at all!
  • these guys are probably interested.

  • Impression of human with impaired intelligence.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jamesjw ( 213986 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:44PM (#8233242) Homepage

    Umm.. SCO Management anyone? :)

    -- Jim.
  • Outside of the Dolly Parton look-alike 'belly warmer' model, most 'robots' that support direct human contact, in a human-like manner, will be virtual images...floating holograms that only the 'owner' can see and hear.

    You'll put any face you like on them, at any time, and there will be no need for prosthetics.

    Mirror, mirror, on the wall....

  • They've perfected they voice [washingtonpost.com], and they're claim they have perfected the face [cnn.com]. So what happens when we don't know things such as:

    Real President or clone (not that in this office it matters

    Real Osama or clone

    Real Arafat who just bombed a synagogue or clone

    On a serious note though, these types of things should be left alone. On the one hand they may seem cool, but they leave a lot of room for abuse.

    Just imagine the field day say a bank robber could have robbing banks while his clone is parked in front

  • If you speak with her, talk slowly and loudly. And no matter what you say, don't be offended if she looks at you blankly and repeatedly asks, "What did you say?"

    Oh yeah, and the robot has less-than-perfect english skills, too.

    Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend.

  • Should gf be worried? (Score:5, Funny)

    by sssmashy ( 612587 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @08:50PM (#8233288)

    Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend.

    This is either the sincerest form of flattery, or he's obsessively building a replacement for his girlfriend whose behaviour is controllable, and governed by logic.

    It sort of makes you think...

  • Honestly, are people afraid of androids looking like humans because it's human nature, or because of Hollywood? I have no problem with a robot looking like a human. I still honestly believe that AI will never exist, nor any form of AI that even closely resembles mankinds.
  • All around the world, last night men were saying "Where's the box of f'rubbers gone?". According to the box, they feel just like natural skin as well. ...Or so I've heard. Sigh
  • ...is an end to goofy robots.

    The last one I saw was a clip from CES or something in January. It was some completely Queer Eye robot bopping to some sort of technowhatsis computer music. Yeesh. And no more robot pets.

    Just get the hunter/killers online already.

    • > And no more robot pets.

      I can handle robotic pets when they become a good bit better than an Aibo, but dammit, I'll shoot somebody if I ever see a DigiPet or its ilk again.
  • Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend. It's sheathed in a high-tech polymer Hanson invented called "f'rubber," which resembles human skin. The face is embedded with tiny electronic motors, so Hertz can smile, frown or wrinkle its forehead.

    So... It looks like his girlfriend, it can move it's face... If it can make an O with it's mouth, I'd REALLY start to think weird things. Oh hell, I'm thinking weird things now.

    Crude, yes. Funny, I think so.

  • got it wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GISGEOLOGYGEEK ( 708023 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @09:22PM (#8233479)
    It is not at all disturbing, he was simpling showing how you and I are more likely to recognize that the computer has sub-human intelligence if the computer looks like a human.

    If the computer looked like something else, subconsciously you wouldn't have the direct link to appearance to use as a reference for the machine's smarts ... you might think it is a lot more intelligent than it is.

    Do you have any trouble identifying when a human obviously has low intelligence? no. Would you have trouble identifying when an android has low intelligence ... maybe not if it didn't look human.

    see, nothing disturbing, just human nature.
    • > Would you have trouble identifying when an android has low intelligence

      You may be on to something with that, but I think there is an additional "something." One of the things some people have had difficulty with is trying to interact, in human ways, with a non-human.
      It is not necessarily that people would realize an android is of low intelligence, but they can tell how a human reacts -- if it doesn't react like you expect it to, you get uneasy. If a person (real) acts strangely, you can tell, becaus

  • Robots Should Choose Themselves (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EM Adams ( 463821 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @09:30PM (#8233555)
    Any sufficiently intelligent entity that is going to be implanted into a cybernetic body should be able to
    1) Choose from a group of predesigned body shapes
    or
    Design their own from scratch (I'm sure eventually...)
    2) Modify them afterwards depending on their judgements of reactions towards them.
    IANAAI (Artificial Intelligence) but such entities may find that one of the greatest challenges to its own evolution and interaction with the physical or virtual reality at hand depends greatly on the appearance it takes.
  • And his first name would be...uummm...err...

  • Al Gore Will be Thrilled (Score:5, Funny)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Monday February 09, 2004 @10:21PM (#8233920) Journal
    With this upgrade, fewer people will suspect that he is a Disney Animatronic robot. He still needs an upgrade on his Natural Language Processing and Rhythm chips, though. I still voted for him. A robot controlled by Disney is better than one controlled by the Military Industrial complex.

    Heh, I'm just begging for a smackdown from the mods with THAT comment! (of course, I'm protected from all but the smartest of them by that last sentence.)

    Wait. Did I type that last parenthetical aside or just think it? (and that should cover the rest ;-)

  • Humanoid robots are a good thing... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gribbly ( 39555 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @10:39PM (#8234025)
    Resembling an animated corpse may be disturbing, but it shouldn't be forgotten that there's a really compelling reason to make humanoid robots:

    Infrastructure.

    It's a huge efficiency to make robots that are able to use all the stuff we've made specifically for humanoids (cars, stairs, doors, chairs, tables, vacuum cleaners, various handheld implements, segways =] ). If you make general purpose humanoid robot, you automatically get a chauffer, a maid, etc., that can use all the tools of the trade. Rather than needing special robot cars, special robot vacuums, etc.

    Kinda OT, but the "anti-human-robot" sentiment set me off. Sorry.

    grib.

  • this is a JOKE (Score:2, Informative)

    by feelyoda ( 622366 )
    The effort to make robots more human is funny. I'm laughing.

    Anyone who has ever interacted with any robot, regardless of scale of the project, resemblance to humans, or application, can tell you that robots are STUPID.

    Life-like faces are the last thing they need. Learning a language, learning how to walk on their own, object recognition, simultaneous localization and mapping, gripping, etc. are all in a pathetic state compared to what you read in CNN.

    I mean, this is why I'm in the field: to improve it. B

  • I met this guy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 3Suns ( 250606 ) on Monday February 09, 2004 @11:01PM (#8234150) Homepage
    I met David Hanson two years ago at the AAAI [aaai.org] conference in Edmonton, Canada. He hung out with our robotics team for a couple days during the conference where he was demonstrating his (really freaky) robot heads and we were competing in the robot host competition. He's a very artistic guy, and about as enthusiastic as they come. I'm glad to see he's starting to make it big.

    Funny thing is, the Ray Kurzweil (who was also at the conference) quote in the article sounds like a conversation I had with David. Our robot, built to serve hors d'oeuvres in a coctail party environment, was designed to look like a table, rather than a butler (Although it had a pan/tilt/zoom camera for a "head"). The idea was to improve on people's expectations of a table rather than disappoint people expecting a real human. Kurzweil's quote sounds like something I probably said to David: "Better to build a smart piece of furniture than a stupid human."
  • I don't know. Maybe it's just me but I like the way robots look. The mechanical movements and crude metal just make them look so cool and they should not try to make robots to imitate humans bt rather make robots to be the best robot for the job it is designed to do. I've always wondered why the robots in terminator had to have metal skulls like humans except for easthetic value. Why would you want to pull a rubber mask over a work of art to try and make it look more acceptable to a human? And someone will
  • Seriously, why are condoms made out of latex? Aren't there better, more natural feeling materials out there that wouldn't disrupt sensitivity so much? It would seem to me that a better feeling condom would lead to a greater practice of safe sex.

    Is latex just used because it's cheap?

  • I want my Chii Persocom!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quizo69 ( 659678 ) on Tuesday February 10, 2004 @01:13AM (#8234853) Homepage
    Making robots resemble humans is, in my opinion, counter-productive.

    Instead, let's create facsimilies of creations such as Chii, from the Chobits anime. It's better to be on the artificial side of the uncanny valley, and make cute bishoujo robots :)

    Who here WOULDN'T want a cute persocom as their assistant??!!
  • Cool, now we can get robots with some soft skin. A Lucy Lubot is one step closer to reality.

    Personally, I want an R. Dorothy Wainwright.

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