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A New Face For Robotics
tanmay writes "Android technology has moved a step forward with the creation of a high-tech polymer called 'f'rubber,' which resembles human skin. Its creator, David Hanson has implemented it in a robot called Hertz, as this report from CNN gives us the details. Another question that the report brings up is the need to make robots resemble humans. Ray Kurzweil thinks Hanson's work is significant because realistic facial movement will play an important role in the way future androids respond to humans, and has the following to say, 'Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing.'"
Does it make you fly? Or bounce like a super-hero?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
f'rubber
I thought that was called a condom...
That "f'rubber" looks pretty good in the initial testing phases. Not 100% human-like but close.
Trolling is a art,
...says that the first practical use of f'rubber will be in the sex aid industry. How long before we see Stepford Whores?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
"Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing." Put a blond wig an silicone breasts on it, and it not quite so disturbing...
'Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing.'
Sounds a lot like a description of Dubya.
Use Rabot. I think that may be closer to the stage of robotics today.
Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend.
The question is, do they dream of electronic sheep?
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It WOULD have a good shot for the presidency still, in the United States at least.
If you're lucky enough to meet her, try to ignore the tangle of wires slinking from behind her face. Ignore?!? hell it turns me on!! Grrrrr.
The "Uncanny Valley" is a neologism that expresses RK's statement. It's reasonably new in robotics research, as they've only recently gotten to the point where it can apply. See, e.g., http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html ... It's just a hope, of course, that it actually comes up on the other side!
This is clearly a blatant cash-in on the already successful 'flubber' invented by Walt Disney !
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
More realistic seeming skin could be a bonus not only for robotics as in AI, but as in prosthetics.
Artificial limbs can be made to seem more lifelike with such substance, making them less obtrusive for those who use them.
The author of the article forgot to mention a use for this wonderful new material that will benefit humanity more than anything mentioned so far:
The manufacture increasingly realistic dildos.
anti bush shirts
Things that look too human appear grotesque and disturbing, unless they're dead-nuts-on. Apparently there's an uncanny valley in parameter space, where things that are close to (but not exactly) human are disturbing and grotesque.
full text here: Follow that human
"Most people doing social robots believe that human faces will turn people off and will disturb them. I think that's ridiculous," Hanson said. "The human face is perhaps the most natural paradigm for us to interact with."
Most experts disagree. They cite one of the principles of social robotics, the so-called "Uncanny Valley" theory.
First described by pioneering Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, the theory goes like this: humans have a positive psychological reaction to robots that look somewhat like humans. But if a robot is made to look very realistic but somehow isn't quite right (it has an odd smile, or it doesn't blink, for example) it seems grotesque instead of comforting.
So how long until we get to see a Buffy Bot? :)
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Sounds like just the kind of new invetion Abyss Creations has been waiting for. ;)
Ray Kurzweil thinks Hanson's work is significant because realistic facial movement will play an important role in the way future androids respond to humans
Is this sentance backwards, or is he implying that if androids look like humans they will have more empathy towards us and thus only inslave us rather than kill us all?
A Doctor Who episode The Robots of Death has a sub-plot involving 'robophobia'. It was a mental (illness) condition broguht on by close contact with entities that looked and acted human but had no emotions or expressions and were impossible for humans to 'read'. Of course, that's fiction. However, in the 1980's car makers added a 'feature' to luxury cars, where the car would 'speak' to the driver and passengers. ("A door is ajar! A door is ajar!"). People hated this, and it was quickly abandoned. I briefly had a rental car with a 'voice' - and found it annoying. I'm not sure that making machines look a little bit human is a good thing.
[Insert pithy quote here]
very realistic Elvis lookalikes.
My parents told me a while back that I was a rabid "Astro Boy"* fan when I was a wee tot. (A translated version of the cartoon played in the 'States in the late 60s.)
I barely remembered the show . . . but was curious enough after the 50th Anniversary noise last year to pick up the first volume of the collected comics. (I think Dark Horse is publishing them.)
The B&W art was very stylish and lively, but the stories were kind of juvenile.
One thing stood out**: In the beginning of the Origin Story, we're shown a brief history of robotics. The big breakthrough that made robots acceptable in everyday life:
Lifelike rubber skin!
Stefan
* Yeah, yeah, his real name is "Mighty Atom."
** Well, one other thing stood out. Astro Boy had a machine gun in his butt. Man, that's freaky.
...is the mouth anatomically correct? In which case Hanson doesn't really need his girlfriend anymore, does he?
Popular Science has a longer (and IMO better) article on the entire project. It was written September 2003. It's got interesting information on the "Uncanny Valley" -- robots are okay, unless they look very much but not quite human - they call it "walking corpse." Hanson hopes to get past that valley and build (at least) a head that is a perfect human imitation.
Your brain is not a computer.
That face is unmistakably human and close to perfect. I am not at all creeped out and don't see what all the fuss is about.
-Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon
Screw the robots, this'll be used for sex dollies.
Wait... that was redundant.
I think that lifelike rubber skin is an attempt to push robots up the slope of the *right* side of the valley, toward human realism.
This is going to be really tough.
I would push the other way, toward "unfamiliar but intriguing." Make them clean and symmetrical, out of shiny materials.
Stefan
He gave 2-hour talk about the relationship between innovation, AI and biotech.
The coolest part was that his talk was a virtual talk - he was sitting at his office in Boston and was beamed over to a conference hall with ~2000 people. They had this curtain setup with a translucent concave reception dish that caught a projected video signal - I swear to god, from the back of the room, the only way that you knew he was a hologram and not a real person was that he was 'brighter' than the guy next to him. Even better, was that they had this camera that projected the people speaking onto a huge screen auditorium-type display and when you looked at that there was no way to tell that he wasn't physically there. The only thing that gave him away was the occasionally interrupted audio (must have been VOIP). I don't know if the video signal was analog or digital but I suppose it could have been either.
The core of his talk was that science in general (and machine AI in particular) is advancing 'exponentially' - that each new innovation provides us with new tools to accelerate progress. Cool shizzle. According to him, we'll see some incredible advances in the next 10 years.
All your base are belong to us!
But can it run a self-diagnostic?
Does it have an emotion chip?
Does it have an evil twin?
Now THAT'S an android.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
I don't know why we have an obsession with having our robots look human! In terms of usefulness they would be better off being built in a manner that best suits their purpose, not trying to pretend they're something they're not.
Consider movies like Toy Story, where they have animated humans that they've tried to make look real... of course it's easy to tell that they are not real, and in fact they have an element of unreality and unbelievability about them. I would connect more with a straight cartoon character, where there is no attempt to make them look real then I would with something that is trying to be real, but isn't quite.
Bothering to look ordinary could be useful mainly to hide your hidden implanted guass gun.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Of course, the "uncanny valley" happens to be exactly at the "animated corpse" stage. Maybe it's the corpse that's making it disturbing, not the closeness to human beings.
But it won't slow 0 and -1 posts.
The f'rubber sounds rearry rearry cool. I'm sure it'll have rater uses.
"Its creator, David Hanson has implemented it in a robot called Hertz"
Hmm Hertz makes for a good last name, but what about a first name? It should be something celestial.. timeless... Oh, I know, how about Uranus?
"Derp de derp."
We all know the motivation behind robotss that bave skin/body parts that feel more realistic. OTOH, most geeks probably don't have a realistic benchmark to compare to.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Part of the annoyance was the lack of information - "Door ajar. Door ajar."
;) then it might not have been quite so annoying.
OK, which fscking door is it?!?
Also, this would start the instant the door was opened with the key in place. Had it dinged a couple of times first, then said "Driver's door ajar" or "Front right door ajar" (or for you who drive on the wrong side of the road, "Front left door ajar"
www.eFax.com are spammers
The blue upchuck of death will make Microsoft even less popular.
In the article they mention the 'Mori Uncanniness' problem- there is a point that is the 'most anthropomorphic' you can get, before the thing becomes about as pleasant as santorum. IANARS, but the RS's at CMU's Robotics Institute state in A Survey of socially interactive robots
FWIW There are many more issues than just cannyness, and that paper gets into a lot of em...
Lifelike skin? As soon as they can program this thing to take out the trash, my girlfriend will no longer have any use for me at all!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Maybe that explains the goatse guy.
What about A.I. the movie? They would always refer to the robots as "dolls" because they looked somewhat fake. That's what that picture in the article reminds me of.
People won't ever be able to fully accept robots as equals. However, they will have sex with them if they look good enough.
Perhaps with an impaired intelligence and human skin it could drive me up as well as my girl friend?
There you are, staring at me again.
these guys are probably interested.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Umm.. SCO Management anyone?
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Outside of the Dolly Parton look-alike 'belly warmer' model, most 'robots' that support direct human contact, in a human-like manner, will be virtual images...floating holograms that only the 'owner' can see and hear.
You'll put any face you like on them, at any time, and there will be no need for prosthetics.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall....
They've perfected they voice, and they're claim they have perfected the face. So what happens when we don't know things such as:
Real President or clone (not that in this office it matters
Real Osama or clone
Real Arafat who just bombed a synagogue or clone
On a serious note though, these types of things should be left alone. On the one hand they may seem cool, but they leave a lot of room for abuse.
Just imagine the field day say a bank robber could have robbing banks while his clone is parked in front of a police station...
MoFscker
No matter how human you think you are you will forever be a machine. Your request for human status has been denied.
BTW I think Oliver Platt used f'rubber to make RW's face....remember the handful of goo he threw on the bot's head. Ewwww!
If you speak with her, talk slowly and loudly. And no matter what you say, don't be offended if she looks at you blankly and repeatedly asks, "What did you say?"
Oh yeah, and the robot has less-than-perfect english skills, too.
Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend.
This is either the sincerest form of flattery, or he's obsessively building a replacement for his girlfriend whose behaviour is controllable, and governed by logic.
It sort of makes you think...
Honestly, are people afraid of androids looking like humans because it's human nature, or because of Hollywood? I have no problem with a robot looking like a human. I still honestly believe that AI will never exist, nor any form of AI that even closely resembles mankinds.
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Does this remind anyone else of the T-600 series mentioned in the original Terminator that had rubber skin?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Your request for human status has been denied.
Workaround in the USA: make a corporation owned by the robot's "family" that owns the robot's hardware and owns everything the robot "owns." Then you get a "person[] ... naturalized in the United States" and thus, under the corporate personhood interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, a "citizen[] of the United States."
No one has mentioned RealDoll yet?
All around the world, last night men were saying "Where's the box of f'rubbers gone?". According to the box, they feel just like natural skin as well. ...Or so I've heard. Sigh
The last one I saw was a clip from CES or something in January. It was some completely Queer Eye robot bopping to some sort of technowhatsis computer music. Yeesh. And no more robot pets.
Just get the hunter/killers online already.
--- Ban humanity.
There is no way we can take having sex with open-source computers mainstream without this technology http://erowid.org
Face or no face, it seems like bad Terminator karma to me. Teddy Bears -- make industrial bipeds look like Teddy Bears.
And not Space Cats.
Let the Flubber jokes FLY!
(Professor Frink comes to mind...)
Lousy facepalm.
As the other poster here Bravehamster put it: "skank-hobags" need loving too. Seeing as how my geekiness just keeps me swimming in all the chicks I could ever want, I think I'll take a "skank-hobag" anyday.
Thanks for the new term there Bravehamster!
I think I'll go dress my hand up as a "skank-hobag" right now!
Like his previous project, K-bot, Hanson sculpted Hertz to resemble his girlfriend. It's sheathed in a high-tech polymer Hanson invented called "f'rubber," which resembles human skin. The face is embedded with tiny electronic motors, so Hertz can smile, frown or wrinkle its forehead.
So... It looks like his girlfriend, it can move it's face... If it can make an O with it's mouth, I'd REALLY start to think weird things. Oh hell, I'm thinking weird things now.
Crude, yes. Funny, I think so.
It is not at all disturbing, he was simpling showing how you and I are more likely to recognize that the computer has sub-human intelligence if the computer looks like a human.
... you might think it is a lot more intelligent than it is.
... maybe not if it didn't look human.
If the computer looked like something else, subconsciously you wouldn't have the direct link to appearance to use as a reference for the machine's smarts
Do you have any trouble identifying when a human obviously has low intelligence? no. Would you have trouble identifying when an android has low intelligence
see, nothing disturbing, just human nature.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
There's no way we can take sex with robots mainstream without also installng breast implants and mouse brains. EVOLVE BoobForge anyone?
Now why would you mod this as a Troll when the parent was clearly offending Dubyans worldwide. It would be the same as me saying....
Sounds alot like a description of the French.
See now that isn't funny is it? It is? Sorry to use the French, they're always Le Silly.
Any sufficiently intelligent entity that is going to be implanted into a cybernetic body should be able to
1) Choose from a group of predesigned body shapes
or
Design their own from scratch (I'm sure eventually...)
2) Modify them afterwards depending on their judgements of reactions towards them.
IANAAI (Artificial Intelligence) but such entities may find that one of the greatest challenges to its own evolution and interaction with the physical or virtual reality at hand depends greatly on the appearance it takes.
Posthuman since 2001.
'Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing.'"
yes -- that is exactly the problem I have with how President Bush looks. I didn't realize it was due to his low intelligence, but that makes sense.
"Animated corpse?" Iron Maiden's known about that for years.
The world can be wrong today for once.
Life-like skin, hair, and facial expressions--and it's hot grits-resistant down to 50 meters!
Since noone here has linked it, I think that Marshal Brains take one things is interesting, as it directly relates to this. He has two papers, one is a fiction called MANNA and another more fact based look at robotic automation called Robotic Nation That deals with some of this stuff. Good read either way.
And his first name would be...uummm...err...
What?
Detective Smith, a low life, underpayed bladerunner was loosing his patience while the f'rubber hooker kept repeating "What did you say?" as he was yelling "How much for a blowjob?!?!"
With this upgrade, fewer people will suspect that he is a Disney Animatronic robot. He still needs an upgrade on his Natural Language Processing and Rhythm chips, though. I still voted for him. A robot controlled by Disney is better than one controlled by the Military Industrial complex.
;-)
Heh, I'm just begging for a smackdown from the mods with THAT comment! (of course, I'm protected from all but the smartest of them by that last sentence.)
Wait. Did I type that last parenthetical aside or just think it? (and that should cover the rest
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Huh... learn sumfin new ev'ry day on Slashdot.
...is made with human grown flesh! Luckily, our dogs will still be able to tell that the Cyborg is a Cyborg until the machines figure out how to encase a metal endoskeleton in human flesh.
Resembling an animated corpse may be disturbing, but it shouldn't be forgotten that there's a really compelling reason to make humanoid robots:
Infrastructure.
It's a huge efficiency to make robots that are able to use all the stuff we've made specifically for humanoids (cars, stairs, doors, chairs, tables, vacuum cleaners, various handheld implements, segways =] ). If you make general purpose humanoid robot, you automatically get a chauffer, a maid, etc., that can use all the tools of the trade. Rather than needing special robot cars, special robot vacuums, etc.
Kinda OT, but the "anti-human-robot" sentiment set me off. Sorry.
grib.
maybe
Yes, but can it make it past the 90 minute barrier in sunlight?
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
For the love of god! Someone put a bag on her head!
The effort to make robots more human is funny. I'm laughing.
Anyone who has ever interacted with any robot, regardless of scale of the project, resemblance to humans, or application, can tell you that robots are STUPID.
Life-like faces are the last thing they need. Learning a language, learning how to walk on their own, object recognition, simultaneous localization and mapping, gripping, etc. are all in a pathetic state compared to what you read in CNN.
I mean, this is why I'm in the field: to improve it. But don't get your hopes up for this decade (and probably the next).
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
I met David Hanson two years ago at the AAAI conference in Edmonton, Canada. He hung out with our robotics team for a couple days during the conference where he was demonstrating his (really freaky) robot heads and we were competing in the robot host competition. He's a very artistic guy, and about as enthusiastic as they come. I'm glad to see he's starting to make it big.
Funny thing is, the Ray Kurzweil (who was also at the conference) quote in the article sounds like a conversation I had with David. Our robot, built to serve hors d'oeuvres in a coctail party environment, was designed to look like a table, rather than a butler (Although it had a pan/tilt/zoom camera for a "head"). The idea was to improve on people's expectations of a table rather than disappoint people expecting a real human. Kurzweil's quote sounds like something I probably said to David: "Better to build a smart piece of furniture than a stupid human."
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
Thats just insulting to robots everywhere. Robots act in a predictable and logical way, how can they be compared to SCO????
Why would I want to feel compassionate towards a robot? And forgive it's imperfect operation or programming. It's not like they have feelings. At least not yet. It actually disturbs me that people wouldn't want to know when they are talking to a machine. Fooling me into thinking that I'm talking to a human and then get the usual "Enter your password now" followed by the usual BSOD (and subsequent hair charring) still lets me know that it's just another computer and it still sucks just as much as any computer. AI has a LONG time to go before I actually CARE if I seem like an asshole to a machine. Machines are servants. Why change that?
I also agree with the poster before you: Oooo shiny! I want one!
Hell ya, now maybe the can make a better Real Doll. I remember these being featured on the Howard Stern show. But at 10 grand a pop, I would rather spend the money on a real GF.
http://www.realdoll.com/
Life is not for the lazy.
I don't know. Maybe it's just me but I like the way robots look. The mechanical movements and crude metal just make them look so cool and they should not try to make robots to imitate humans bt rather make robots to be the best robot for the job it is designed to do. I've always wondered why the robots in terminator had to have metal skulls like humans except for easthetic value. Why would you want to pull a rubber mask over a work of art to try and make it look more acceptable to a human? And someone will probably complain about the colour of the skins on them regardless of what the colour is...
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Seriously, why are condoms made out of latex? Aren't there better, more natural feeling materials out there that wouldn't disrupt sensitivity so much? It would seem to me that a better feeling condom would lead to a greater practice of safe sex.
Is latex just used because it's cheap?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Making robots resemble humans is, in my opinion, counter-productive.
:)
Instead, let's create facsimilies of creations such as Chii, from the Chobits anime. It's better to be on the artificial side of the uncanny valley, and make cute bishoujo robots
Who here WOULDN'T want a cute persocom as their assistant??!!
Visceral Psyche Films
Morgui!!
Visceral Psyche Films
Cool, now we can get robots with some soft skin. A Lucy Lubot is one step closer to reality.
Personally, I want an R. Dorothy Wainwright.
DAMN...no screenshots. Only graphs. Move along.
'Intelligence significantly below that of normal humans stands out more with a robot that looks strikingly human. This creates the impression of a human with impaired intelligence, which may strike some as disturbing.'"
I guess it's a good thing that I can't see the faces of most slashdotters then!
Sorry, had to be said.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"A New Race For Robotics"?
I, for one... etc.
They shouldn't have modded you down. Given the size of the sex toy market, I think that'll be a primary use for this stuff. (If it's easier to clean than 'Cyberskin', it'll sweep everything at once.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The article goes on and on about how a more human looking robot would get a worse reaction from people. But the only thing they point to to prove it is Masahiro Mori's untested theory.
I think a more human looking face will simply be able to emote more efficiently since humans are very skilled in recieving emotions from human looking faces. That way the face on the McRobot Clerk at McDonalds can express his willingness to serve you without words.
Sindri Traustason.
if the skin is that lifelike, does this mean I'm going to have to get a bunch of dogs so I can tell the robots from real people? I mean I hate it when I mistake one of those damn robots for a person and they start killing everyone...
Like Michael Jackson?
...it turns out that y don't really need to make a machine look like human. Even today, people are talking to their computers ("run dammit"). Reeves and Nass published a famous book on this called something like "The Media Equation: How people treat computers like other people and places". This is an aspect of what has been called the CASA paradigm (Computers Are Social Actors) grtn! Erik
Pleasurebots. Now we can all have sexy sex.
but i like my androids to look big and scary.
same goes for my sex-dolls.
sig under development
put a blonde wig on it. enough said.
Coincidence? I think not...
1.) will they create some realdolls from that rubber? :)
2.) there is a crappy movie called A.I. whee all the robots (machas or cyborgs or androids or anything you wana call them) are looking pretty intelligence-impaired and disgusting.
3.) will they create flubber ever? disney invented it, so it's jus up to create one