Thursday, July 28, 2005

Its too bad she won't live. But then again who does?

A Japanese researcher has developed what appears to be a Nexus-1.

"Repliee Q1 can interact with people. It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying, although we obviously have a long way to go yet."

Me, I'm just waiting for the inevitable day when their technologies get picked up by these guys.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Hi Salvius!
I enjoyed the ironic final link, the comment on the BBC site apparently failing to bat an eyelid about how fluttering her eyelashes could be important enough to include as a capability. Femininity is clearly only linked to sexual availability in the robot creator's mind, or perhaps he believes it is a demure trait - hell, if I had the wherewithal to build a Fem-Bot, I'd only give it two actions, one, giving the finger (though, no doubt some kinky male would find some alternative useage for this capability) and kneeing subjects identified as male in the nuts. I would then send it to the inventor and let him act as test subject. OK, the above was intended to be tongue in cheek, but it really makes my blood boil to read about the perpetuation of outmoded gender stereotypes in the cybernetic world.

Unknown said...

Um, "ironic", yes... :-)

Personally, if I had the wherewithal to build a Fem-Bot, I'd enter it into a Wet T-Shirt Contest.

As for your plan to knee the inventor in the groin for perpetuating "outmoded gender stereotypes in the cybernetic world", it may be important to remember that these are Japanese people:

"Before Repliee Q1, Professor Ishiguro developed Repliee R1 which had the appearance of a five-year-old Japanese girl."

Ewww.

Anonymous said...

On my one and only trip to Tokyo (for work; we were also given a VIP tour round the Tanegashima Space Centre, hard hats and all) I wondered whether I would come across one of those notorious vending machines, but not one was in sight (at least not in any of the streets I walked around, and not in the Japanese Parliament either!). Are they not just an urban legend?

Anonymous said...

And exactly what would you need that Love Doll thing for, eh????