Slashdot Mirror
Meet Lucy, The Orangutan Robot
Roland Piquepaille writes "Lucy is not an ordinary robot, driven by software. She's a pure product of artificial intelligence (AI). And after a three-year long training, she's now able to make a difference between an apple and a banana, which is quite handy for an orang-utan, even if she doesn't eat them. Her five microcontroller chips wouldn't like this... In "A Grand plan for brainy robots," BBC News Online tells us that Lucy is the brainchild of Steve Grand, an honorary research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology. And why did he choose an orang-utan design? "I made Lucy as an orang-utan because, can you imagine how scary it would be if she looked like a human baby?," said Grand. More details and references are available in this overview which also includes the cover of Grand's last book, 'Growing Up with Lucy: How to Build an Android in Twenty Easy Steps,' which was already reviewed on Slashdot."
Considering that the real ones are headed for extinction, at least we'll have some facsimile as a reminder.
(Not sure whether I should follow that with a winky-face or a sad-face.)
I don't think it is a particular ethic, as there research insitutes which concentrate on the facial part alone. IRC, the reasoning for the no-face design is, that when a robot has an actual face, people are trying to interprete its expressions. A hard to read face gives people a bad feeling. So, they are developing independently from the robots faces which can express "feelings".
Robots have a different association in Japanese culture. In Western pop culture the first reference to a robot I can think of is Maria from Metropolis, in Japan Astro Boy. So, I'd say the bad feeling is also partly rooted in culture.
> It is a lot harder to [...] attach [...] emotion to something that's faceless and non-human looking, [...]
Um, I'd like to refer to Tamagotchis. It is not uncommon that people attach feelings to things.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
I grow weary of all the people with cyberist attitudes who are scared of machines simply because they don't look exactly like us. If you look at the best of our CG characters today, they STILL don't look like us. I imagine that the first humanoid robots will probably look a lot like CG characters come to life. Get rid of those old fashioned attitudes... ;P
Un-news
And I quote: "...conjures up fears of super-clever robots, the likes of Frankenstein..." Umm yeah.