Humanoid robots in my lifetime

BBC News just did a story Japanese develop 'female' android in 2005 on the newest Robot unveiled, a "female" android named Repliee Q1Expo. I found it very interesting seeing as she looks so real that it can be hard to tell from a picture that she is a robot. There were a few videos of her, but her movements made it easy to tell she was a robot. That was over a year and a half a go. What do they have now? KOKORO COMPANY LTD was talking about improving her movements so that people would be unable to tell she was not human. The new model ActroidDer was unveiled in 2006 and is available for 5 day rental, costume included. This year they unveiled ActroidDer2, “a younger sister of Actroid-DER, has been improved in her astonishing appearance and high performance and is now even cuter than her older sister”, and is also available for rental. This does make me think of the movies Blade Runner (they were not androids but same idea) and Cherry 2000. It seems that some time in 2008 they may be introducing a new version, at Comdex 2008. The idea is to have a robot so lifelike that people cannot tell is a robot.


Repliee Q1Expo



Actroid-DER


It is going to be very interesting to see what comes out next. I was impressed by the toy robot dogs and Azimo; this is kind of scary that they have come so far in the last few years. It is said that most of our technological advancements are done for war or sex. In this case it may be both. David Levy just wrote a book, LOVE AND SEX WITH ROBOTS The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, about sex with robots being a reality in about 5 years and marriage with robots being a reality in 2050. No one knows what military uses will be for the humanoid robots, or when they will be being used. For all we know they are already in use. There is Robonaut for the Mars exploration, Robonaut is a humanoid robot designed by the Robot Systems Technology Branch at NASA's Johnson Space Center in a collaborative effort with DARPA. There is currently a sex robot being designed for the adult industry, for people to actually have sex with. Though sex androids have already been developed by aircraft mechanic Michael Harriman and are for sale on his web site FIRST ANDROIDS. The idea of Data from Star Trek the next generation may become a reality in my lifetime.


Robonaut

These developments are leading to some moral questions. How real are these robots? Will they have feelings and emotions? Timesonline did an article called No sex please, robot, just clean the floor where an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated. We have all read the Sci-Fi stores or have seen the movies where we misuse robots as our slaves and they develop into a species. In the 2005 article Sex and the single robot, Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, a leading authority on technology and ethics of robotics, developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire. He also said: ‘Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species.’ It makes you wonder what is next.