Creepshow

[2triky]

Tokyo store's female android looking for love

by Tim Hornyak | February 2, 2012

Ah, Valentine's Day. It's just around the corner, so have you thought about how you'll express your love for your favorite inanimate object? Humans are so passe.

Japanese retailers have a suggestion. They're setting geek hearts aflutter with a pretty, ageless female android who's looking for love.

Clutching a bag and cell phone, she seems to be waiting for a suitor.

"Android falls in love? She is waiting for you" reads the writing on her glass box at Takashimaya Department Store in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.

The special Valentine's display features Geminoid F, the photogenic robot developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and colleagues.

The mechanical lady was modeled on a real woman in her twenties. She sits in her glass room at Takashimaya and greets shoppers.

Based on data from an embedded sensor array around her, the android reacts to people in the vicinity. She moves her shoulders and neck, and changes her facial expression, smiling or yawning, depending on what's going on.

"Retailers would like to use real fashion models in their store windows, but it isn't practical," Ishiguro told IDG News. "Mannequins, however, don't really look human. Using an android like this realizes the store windows of the future."

Geminoid is an air servo-powered humanoid with eye, mouth, head, and shoulder mobility. It can also be remote-operated so that it acts as a surrogate for a distant user, reproducing his or her facial expressions and voice.

Ishiguro developed the machine in collaboration with ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, and Kokoro, a Tokyo-based entertainment firm known for its Actroid androids. He also made an android copy of himself, the original Geminoid.

The professor's latest experiment will also give him a chance to study how shoppers react to the fembot when tens of thousands pour in over the weekend. Expect some heavy breathing.

"What is this android feeling when you look at it?" Ishiguro mused. "That's quite fun to imagine."

No doubt she's wondering whether an ardent admirer will bust her out of that glass cage and carry her off to a love hotel.

Geminoid may be far from perfect--she can't walk and needs a large air compressor just to move her head. But what are such flaws to a real Romeo?

After all, as Shakespeare wrote:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Source

[Russell]

Problem with such robots is they can short out.

[Coligny]

AND STILL NOT A FUCKING USEFULL ROBOT WORKING IN FUKUSHIMA EXCEPT THE PATHETIC VIDEOCAMERA MOUNTED ON CATERPILLARD TRACKS...

WAY TO GO JAPAN

You'd think after this fiasco they'd shut the fuck up aboot their army of useless computerized RealDolls...

[Yokohammer]

Speaking of dolls looking for love (it had to happen):

Only in Japan: Love Doll Brothels are Bustling

[Russell]

Coming back to this Cherry 2000 movie, there is actually a nice ending to it, when the guy drops his sex robot due to her lack of emotions, and prefers the real girl. It is all in this fragment (unfortunately only in Spanish available):

[YT]H7yq28bDHcA[/YT]

I especially like the finale when one of the sex robots lightheartedly offers a sandwich to the other, while her "lover" just passed away.

[twww]

[Coligny]

Speaking of dolls looking for love (it had to happen):

Only in Japan: Love Doll Brothels are Bustling

Hey, those crap take an awefull lot of place for storage... better rent by the hour...

(I wuz told...)

[Greji]

Hey, those crap take an awefull lot of place for storage... better rent by the hour...

Ahhh, why would you want to store them?

[Coligny]

Ahhh, why would you want to store them?

I don't like being watched, i'm more a behind the camera kinda man...

Beside, I wouldn't want the other ones to be jealous while i get busy with the lucky one of the day...

[Samurai_Jerk]

Very creepy. The way that robot moves it's like they have a mentally disturbed woman on display in the monkey house at the zoo.

[Russell]

I don't like being watched, i'm more a behind the camera kinda man...

Beside, I wouldn't want the other ones to be jealous while i get busy with the lucky one of the day...

That's a lie! You just want to hide them from the Ojisans roaming around in your wife's hospital.

And speaking of renting by the hour, would you rent a cat by the hour?!?

[bidayuhboy]

If it floats, flies, or f#cks it is always cheaper to rent than buy!

[Mike Oxlong]

If it floats, flies, or f#cks it is always cheaper to rent than buy!

FGL has/had been using that a sig for a while.

[Taro Toporific]

enhanced-buzz-13880-1349806565-2.jpeg

enhanced-buzz-3826-1349805882-7.jpeg

via buzzfeed.com: 15 Mannequins That Will Steal Your Soul

[Taro Toporific]

AND STILL NOT A FUCKING USEFUL ROBOT WORKING IN FUKUSHIMA EXCEPT THE PATHETIC VIDEOCAMERA MOUNTED ON CATERPILLAR TRACKS...

WAY TO GO JAPAN...

Darpa’s Robotic Gladiators Will Battle on This Disaster Course
WIRED.com | 12.19.136:30 AM
In a robotic twist on American Gladiators, 17 robots and their teams will descend upon Florida this week to see which ones have the greatest superhero potential.
DARPA, the Pentagon’s research wing, is turning to robots to respond alongside humans when there’s a natural or human-made disaster — an initiative that DARPA says was triggered by the 2011 earthquake in Japan that caused the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.
At the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Trials Friday and Saturday at the Homestead Miami Speedway in Homestead, Fla., robot prototypes will be run through a challenge course consisting of eight tasks to evaluate robots’ perception, autonomous decision-making, mobility, dexterity and strength...
Continues...

Embiggen

DARPA-Course.jpg

wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2013/12/DARPACourse.jpg

[Coligny]

Just missing the "find Sarah Connor" step and we are truly fucked... (Maybe for 2014...)

[Taro Toporific]

Darpa’s Robotic Gladiators Will Battle on This Disaster Course
WIRED.com | 12.19.136:30 AM

Japanese SCHAFT Takes the Gold at DARPA Robot Challenge
slashdot.org Posted by timothy on Sunday December 22, 2013 @10:27AM -- from the isaac-hayes-soundtrack dept.
savuporo writes:
"The two days of DARPA's humanoid robotics challenge are now over. 16 teams entered in three categories — custom built humanoid, DARPA supplied Atlas platform, and a non-humanoid form — and competed in eight different tasks. The all-Japanese SCHAFT team scored 27 out of 32 maximum points, followed by IHMC Robotics and Tartan Rescue, with 20 and 18 points. The tasks included challenges like driving a vehicle, climbing ladders and walls, using handheld tools to cut through walls, etc. All robots had a mix of autonomy and teleoperated controls to accomplish the tasks....
... Team SCHAFT and Boston Dynamics (building the Atlas platform) were recently acquired by Google."