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Androids at China's Robot Expo
eldavojohn writes "China's 2006 Robot Expo has wrapped up. Even though there is little information on it online, there has been much attention given to Zou Renti's android. It seems that everyone cool is making androids of themselves these days. There's a decent article on the state of androids in Japan but unfortunately, the concentration isn't on functionality, it's on fooling the humans the robot interacts with: "The key to a successful android, according to Dr. Ishiguro, is both very humanlike appearance and behaviour. One of his early android creations was cast from his then four-year-old daughter. While it looked like her, it had few actuators and its dull facial expressions and jerky movements proved so uncanny that the girl later refused to go to her father's lab because her scary robot double was lurking there." The latest robot he's built has 42 actuators, allowing it to wow many spectators at the expo. I wonder how much longer it will be before we see Blade-Runner-like cases on the evening news?"
You might want to watch "Natural City".
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I liked the special effects, the androids, and the visual related to facials and cranials. Even the scenes where human bones are broken by a particularly ruthless android/robot are "chilling" I got my copy at Virgin for $24.99. You can also get it at Border's. Probably 5 or 6 other places.
SPOILER WARNINGS!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378428/
http://www.lovehkfilm.com/panasia/natural_city.ht
http://www.koreanfilm.org/kfilm03.html
Despite there being any DVD 9 on Tartan DVDs, it runs fine in Kaffeine and Xine, and I'm on Mandriva 10.1
Oh, and I agree with what LoveHKFilm said:
"It must be said again: the production design is damn fine. What director Min Byung-Chun and company have accomplished here rivals anything out of Hollywood's SFX handbook, and probably at a fraction of the cost."
These help:
"Natural City attempts to placate both the thinkers and the bloodthirsty in one glorious widescreen go."
"The carnage is kind of cool, but not entirely consistent."
"However, in grand Korean Cinema style, tragedy and bad vibes are nearly guaranteed. If you've seen any Korean Cinema before, you should know this: it's going to get melodramatic, and if the filmmakers can pull it off, they'll send all their characters straight to hell in a body bag."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
How would you program the laws of robotics?
That seems very hard because they are arbitrary/relative in every situation.
Regularly, you wouldn't pound on a guy's chest. But if they meant to save humans in trouble, they'd have to give the heimlich manuever to a choking man and CPR to a man pulled out of the pool and not breathing - both acts which can break ribs, etcetera - thus being acts they can't perform lightly.
"It seems that everyone cool is making androids of themselves these days."
And then, when an android commits a crime, it gets executed by lethal wetning and you are sent the bill for those drops of water.
Onda Technology Institute