We cover a lot of robots here on Fast Company, sometimes exciting
tech, sometimes promising for healthcare, or the future of daily
life...and sometimes outright
creepy.
The latest Japanese android is firmly in this category.
She's a
product of the Intelligent Robotics lab at Osaka University and robot
builders Kokoro Co. Ltd., and she's dubbed Geminoid
F (the "f" is for female.) And all that use of the word "she" is
justified, as the bot is quite definitely convincingly female--which
technically makes her a gynoid rather than an android. All this super
realism is because she's modeled after a real twenty-something Japanese
woman--on the right in that image above--via a sophisticated scanning
system. Silicone realistic skin, convincing hair, and teeth that seem so
real they make Geminoid F have a nearly human smile. Add in subtle
movements, driven by a batch of servos, that give the robot the ability
to raise an eyebrow, or mimic those tiny tics that our fallible
flash-and-blood bodies get up to all the time without us realizing, and
you've got a machine that is freakishly real. She truly delves into that
uncanny valley between detectably artificial and undetectable
human-mimicing.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Get Ready for Robots to Blur The Boundary Between Real and Unreal, Creepily | Technomix | Fast Company
Author: Kit
Eaton
