At the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York, a conference focused on the technological singularity in the coming years, Japanese scientist and robotics expert Hiroshi Ishiguro unveiled an android that so closely resembled him, that it was able to do small humanoid movements even the blinking of its own eyes. Ishiguro, director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan, has been known for developing lifelike androids and presenting very advanced robotic technology to the public.
Ishiguros new Geminoid the common name he gave for his lifelike androids resembled a real person as far as the small movements were concerned, although this specific one that he unveiled at the New York conference was controlled remotely by a person offstage. Ishiguro has also previously developed an android for the Takashimaya Osaka department store; a fashionably dressed female android equipped with voice-recognition microphones and can actually respond to queries about the clothes in the store. The robot eventually became so popular that the clothing articles that it wore sold out immediately, Ishiguro laughingly revealed.
Apart from his Geminoids, the prolific roboticist has also developed the telenoid, a robot with pillow-like attributes deliberately designed to appear ageless and genderless so that people can associate them with a face that they imagine and hug and cuddle, among other things. Ishiguro said that the Telenoid has been among the elderly, especially in Denmark, who took to it very well, he revealed. The elderly have a need for physical contact that can be attenuated by the Telenoid. The Elfoid one of Ishiguros more fanciful inventions is a somewhat smaller version of the Telenoid that functions as a mobile phone, humanizing these little gadget boxes that, Ishiguro said, everyone talks to everyday anyways.
But Ishiguros fame may probably come more from the Geminoid F F for female which in Japan has beendubbed as the love bot. The Geminoid F was inspired by a Nintendo game which simulated a high school love story. The result was a remarkably life-like female android, with soft, feminine features. Ishiguro said that the projects aim was to create a seamless, humanoid robot. He said that Japanese men are more prone to fall in love with simulated humanoids than Western men, with the Japanese society more accepting of these robots because they believe that even lifeless things have souls.
http://www.alrasub.com/japanese-robotics-scientist-hiroshi-ishiguro-unveils-body-double-robot/
