Creepy Japanese Robot Flipper-Babies Are Coming For You
Posted by Michael_Byrne on Tuesday, Aug 03, 2010
“It’s suffering, somebody kill it already!”
Meet Telenoid R1, a robot created by Hiroshi Ishiguro at the University of Osaka. Telenoid R1, which looks like a fetus/flipper-baby/whathaveyou to save on manufacturing costs in part, is teleoperated. That is, someone in a remote location talks and moves at their computer and Telenoid R1 “reproduces” those movements and sounds at the other end. So it’s kind of like a rubber surrogate.
The other part of the whole looking like a flipper-baby thing is to make the robot as ambiguous as possible. According to its manufacturer, it’s meant to be able to represent any human, male or female, old or young, whatever. See for yourself in the video above.
Via IEEE Spectrum, a few words about just that:
The unique appearance may be eery when we first see it. However, once we communicate with others by using the telenoid, we can adapt to it. If a friend speaks from the telenoid, we can imagine the friend’s face on the telenoid’s face. If we embrace it, we have the feeling, that we embrace the friend.
I’d just like to respond with, F— no, keep it the hell away from me.
I guess that’s the uncanny valley talking, but no.
Via PopSci.Filed under:
About the author
Michael covers physics, climate science, the future of music, and assorted things fallen through cracks at Motherboard. A native of Colorado, Michigan, and Oregon, he currently resides in Baltimore...
