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The Robot Professor
kaizokunami writes "From Wired News, we learn that a Japanese professor has created an android of himself that he uses to 'robot in' to classes. According to the article, 'It blinks and fidgets in its seat, moving its foot up and down restlessly, its shoulders rising gently as though it were breathing. These micromovements are so convincing that it's hard to believe this is a machine -- it seems more like a man wearing a rubber mask.'" More from the article: "'I want to check whether students, as well as my family, can feel my presence through Geminoid,' says Ishiguro, who seems perfectly at ease with his new twin. Geminoid already has a palpable gravitas that comes across when chatting to Ishiguro through the android, and one hesitates to even poke the machine's rubbery hands and cheeks."
Grad students are now obsolete.
Domo arigato, Professor Roboto!
I can see it now, the building catches on fire, and some poor fireman/policeman/samaritan gives his life or lung trying to save a freaking robot...
I'm not fat, just big boned...
don't need to show up to class to teach like students don't need to show up to learn....
I have been looking for an android with a palpable gravitas for a long time. I hope it is fully functional.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Robot Supermodels.
...Dr. Noonien Soong?
For some reason I am not a fan of humanoid robots. Ghost in the Shell is cool to watch, I just don't want to live in such a world.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I wonder where this fits on the Uncanny Valley curve?
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But is this robot professor... fully functional? Alternitively, in other news half of slashdot realizes that they can make their very own girl robot...
Ow! My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
So he creates and android that looks exactly like him, looks upon his creation and does not realize that he needs a change of style?
I personally would have made myself taller, a little more athletic, and heat vision is a must.
The future will take care of itself.. It has in the past
Sure, he may be at ease with his 'twin' now, but little does he realize that it's actually all part of its nefarious plan for world domination. Soon he will be disposed of, and his identity taken over...
Do we give the professor a disk with a jpeg of an apple on it?
welcome our new android lecturer overlords?
Seriously, something like this must destroy students concentration.. It certainly seems to take away the human side of teaching.
Will program for karma.
Interesting! While the android is in deed very similar looking to the actual guy it does give off the aura of not beeing "entirely there"! It reminds me of the "look" of a paraplegic or of someone who has suffered a stroke. I don't mean this to be insensitive, its just that it is interesting that the best attempt at artificial life resembles a human who has sufffered from some sort of trauma.
...the shit's going to hit the fan when the guy dies and the robot decides to seek revenge on the guys that made fun of him in college, leaving the dimwitted clones of one of the revengee's children to seek out help from their grandfather's crack team of adventurers.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
There is something about the gaze of an intelligent person that can't be replicated. I'm wondering if this might have some subconscious effect on the students. I'm sure it would be alot harder to keep eye contact with a creation like this. And from there who knows what the complications would be.
Does anyone else think they would have a hard time learning from and listening to an object that didn't exude intelligence, even if in the background it was being controlled by a highly intelligent individual?
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
FTA it looks like the actions and movements of the android have to be entirely controlled by humans using motion sensors. The android apparently is incapable of reading any kind of inputs (visual/aural) and processing and acting on them (the eyes/ears are for purely cosmetic reasons and nothing more, i believe). This is purely a controlled mechanical robot, not an intelligent auto-responsive robot - and though it's a neat proof of concept, I wonder what its real world applications could be?
My sig has been answered.
Not bad, for a first step. Of course, he should really be working on a beta-level personality simulation such as those described in Alastair Reynolds' series of books (Revelation Space et al). With that achieved, he wouldn't even have to be involved in teaching students. Now that is a solid technological goal!
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I bet this thing would do a better job than some of the professors that I've had. What's really funny, is that general ed. teachers may find themselves out of work as one of these teachs an entire class prerecorded material. The only negative is that it can't answer questions, but then again most teachers don't answer questions. They would just need to fill it with verbal outputs all saying, "find the answer yourself." If these were cheap enough, I could see them replacing some highschool teachers and some college either general ed or freshman level courses. I saw one post about super model versions next. Well, you know this is crafted after a teacher most wouldn't pick. They'd most likely pick a super model or atleast a very attractive person to use as the model for these things if they went into production.
...detect your Crackberry that has all the test answers sent to you remotely by your friends?
If so, that would be an ingenious invention.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I want to check whether students, as well as my family, can feel my presence through Geminoid.
Sounds like this guy is using The Force to suit his evil purposes.
Dupe article.
Fo'shizzle.
... to artifical schizophrenia, in just a few short years.
What wonderful times we live in.
Seriously, though - if this thing can wait for the cable guy, he should sell a million of them.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And those grad students need to take better care of themselves - look at the acne on the guy in the last picture! He's giving even the most ardent mom's basement-dwelling
Instead of Old Japanese Male College Professor robots, can we get Young Blonde Female College Student robots? Because I'd, uh, be willing to, you know, test out the functionality.
For the past two days I have been remotely participating in a Siemens hiQ 4200 operations and maintenance course. Although I can hear my fellow students over VoIP and view the presentation over a slideshow I'm finding that I miss the simple interaction of person to person communications. It's been very easy to get distracted by e-mail and things that are happening in real life. I've been thinking that there should be a video feed to go along with the audio and text presentation. Even a simulated instructor would be better than the way delivery is going on here now. Of course, the droning on about ssh sessions and unix administration might have something to do with why I'm having trouble keeping focused.
To be completely frank, I think this robot is a waste of effort. The thing is completely dependent on human input which means they might has well just have the actual guy sitting there in front of people. Even if they were recording a number of preset facial expressions it will never be truly convincing because it wont be able to call on the nuances of human emotion.
A robot doesn't look alive simply because its eyes wander around the room. If the intent is to guage human reaction to the thing I think they're going to find the response is exceedingly negative given how mishapen and disturbing the robot looks.
It's not like this is anything particularly unique either, it just happened that this guy used his own face as a model. Although, I suppose this guy's work isn't surprising given the amount of research and development Japanese put towards consumer products. I predict that will be the ultimate application we'll see for this work.
I'd be impressed if they were developing AI which mimicked human reactions. If the thing could learn by watching people and apply those observations for its own use in interactions.
I have seen the future, and it is robot pr0n!
This is something new? Obviously you never took engineering at Penn State, we've got loads of them, just step into a classroom. The administration swears they're human but I'm not believing it...
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"Aside from improving his android's lip synchronization and developing autonomous control of eye gaze, Ishiguro wants to start interacting with students through Geminoid."
Which makes this an avatar. He provides the essential interactive elements which would make it appealing to students (he seems to hope).
Psychologists may find something interesting here, being the way humans relate to this 'once removed' human presence.
When I was a kid in australia we had some friends who lived a long way away in the outback. Their kids attended school by Radio sometimes (perhaps all the time, I don't recall, this was over thirty years ago). A teacher who had a local presence might be an interesting extension of that basic idea. It's virtually the same thing as radio in this context, but more advanced.
What might be good is to use such a device to interact with people who are severely disabled. A system capable of translating the teachers actions into stimuli useful for the particuler student would have a lot of advantages. That way one teacher could interact with a class full of students with varying needs, where their own version of the Avatar translates to their needs.
Let me guess--the only clues that it's a robot are that it has a permanently painted on smirk, its eyes don't seem quite focused, there's a square access panel on its back (the door to which makes a visible outline even over a suit jacket in debates), it gets tired late at night when its battery runs down, it is overly touchy-feely with German diplomats and bald people, ... and, of course, it requires a human to operate it from an "undisclosed location".
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I think Asians won't be obsolete for a while, if only because we can mass-produce them using unskilled labor.
Perhaps I misread TFA, but my impression was that this was really some sort of telepresence. How does it save you any time, if you have to be wired up to some control system for the robot to make all these lifelike motions, and you have to pay attention to the meeting to be able to speak intelligently if called upon? You might as well just be physically present.
It would be different if there was travel involved - then you would at least save the time of going to the meeting. But for local events, this seems like overkill. It's just a very expensive form of telecommunting.
Sean
I think a lot of people are really missing the point of what this robot is supposed to do. There's a lot of comments about how the robot itself isn't autonomous and has no intelligence. That's not at all the role that the robot is supposed to fill.
The robot is supposed to simply project the presence of the professor remotely. Obviously we can do that to some degree with just a two way television hookup, but it's not like being in the room. You can't point at students and interact with them through a flat display. You can't change where the camera is pointing, and the students don't really know what the professor can see.
I think the biggest thing that this robot is missing is "gaze". If you ask me, the single distinguishing feature of presence is making eye contact. As someone pointed out, it doesn't look like there's actually any cameras in the eyes of this robot, so the actual professor can't see what the robot is "looking" at. If the robot could have gaze, reproduce facial expressions, and even replicate hand gestures, I think that would go a long way to having remote presence.
AccountKiller
Stormy: okay, so what if i put my brain in a robot body, and then there was a war between robots and humans, which side would i be on?
Debbie: humans! you still have a human brain
Sparks: but the humans would discriminate against you. you cant even vote!
Marco Rodrigo: man, we better not have to live on reservations, that would really chap my caboose!
What's another word for pirate treasure?
[voice= Twiki's Girlfriend]
Well I think it's Booty Booty Booty!
[/voice]
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Does it dream of electric sheep?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
...there really isn't a whole lot of difference between what he's done and the classic Animatronics pioneered by the conservative state Disneyland in California. In other news, I posted my reasons for why I think humanoid androids are a dead end and they apply just as well here.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Is this "Robot Professor" in any way related to "Video Professor"?
Are there any videos clip of this android in action?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Have you ever gone to a lecture where the speaker forgets to turn off his wireless mike and then does or says something embarassing like for example taking a bowel movement in the bathroom while the entire lecture hall listens in?
Now imagine "roboting in" from home to give your lecture, then forgetting to turn it off before you did something else you might do in your home. Maybe burst out into a Numa-Numa rendition, Starwars fight with your dog, or spank the monkey.
I'm sure it will happen when these "presence" avatars become ubiquitous.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
From the Artcle's picture section:
"A Geminoid operator wears motion-tracking lip markers. When the operator moves his mouth, Geminoid's lips make the same movement. A speaker inside the android lets the robotic double be heard."
And best said by one of the comments below the picture section:
"It's not even an android. It's all puppet and that all it is. If you have to have an operator in a back room running the thing, it doesn't even qualify as a robot, much less an "android"..... Oh, and Jim Hensen is dead, so his opinion doesn't matter. Mark Cannistraci"
Is he (the robot) good enough to only hit on the really hot ones (infrared sensors)?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I just don't want to live in such a world.
You might not have many choices. Apart from suicide, of course. I really don't recommend that. Why not try to come to terms with the age we live in?
Forget robot selves to do my bidding, I want Kiln People.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
He's the best avatar ever.
If you don't get it you're not watching the right show
My other sig is extremely clever...
A book "Pacem in Terris" by S. Lem is actually quite comprehensive on a matter of remotely controlled androids. ______________________ So... no mod points in this thread
Via Impress Robot Watch:
1 /atr0642.wmv1 /atr0682.wmv1 /atr0708.wmv1 /atr0647.wmv1 /atr0723.wmv
http://robot.watch.impress.co.jp/static/2006/07/2
http://robot.watch.impress.co.jp/static/2006/07/2
http://robot.watch.impress.co.jp/static/2006/07/2
http://robot.watch.impress.co.jp/static/2006/07/2
http://robot.watch.impress.co.jp/static/2006/07/2
Finally, we can all go golfing while our android puts up with our wive's nagging! The best of both worlds!
None of the comments so far have mentioned this, but I just had a thought. In several cases of "paralysis", the brain is still sending out messages, but either the muscles have atripohed, or the nerves have been severed, or have deteriorated. Could this "Robot" not be used in such cases? Obviously, a lot of work will have to go into the "Brain -> Robot" interface, but I think that it could be useful. There is a story I read somewhere about a young man, who can move a mouse pointer on screen using just his mind, haveing undergone an implan operation. If the tech can be worked out, many people would appreciate it, as it would allow them to lead a fuller more active life than just sitting in a bed/chair. Coupled with an ambulatory body, and at least one functioning arm, I think this should be seriously persued.
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