Android Copy of Danish Man Unveiled

An anonymous reader writes "The Geminoid family, a series of ultra-realistic androids, each a copy of a real person, has a new member: Geminoid DK, a robot clone of a Danish researcher and the most realistic Geminoid yet. The robot has lifelike facial features and movements, blinking, smiling, frowning with incredible realism. The Danish researcher, Henrik Scharfe of Aalborg University, teamed up with Japanese animatronics firm Kokoro and roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro to create his robot twin, which he plans to use to study human-robot interaction and cultural differences in the perception of robots. This is the first Geminoid that is not based on a Japanese person; it's also the first bearded one."

Comments

realistic looking

[Sir_Lewk]

I was at first shocked at how realistic this was, but then I realized that I probably was thinking that because they didn't model as a young Japanese woman with perfect skin. Seriously, there are so many robot heads modelled that way, real young Japanese women are almost starting to seem robotic.

Re:realistic looking

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Some of the manufacturing shots are pretty disturbing, though.

this one, for instance feeds exclusively on human fear...

Re:realistic looking

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Well... As a guy, I'm waiting for the young Japanese female robot with working pussy and mouth...

And as a Slashdotter, you're probably also waiting for it to come with realistic fur and a tail.

Re:realistic looking

[Anonymous Coward]

And as a /b/tard, he's probably waiting for it to come in child sizes.

Re:realistic looking

[v1]

I was also extremely impressed. Until you see some of the jerky movements a bit into the demo, there's no way you'd think it wasn't real. Realisting looking hair. Even the teeth are naturally a little uneven. None of that "final fantasy plastic skin" CGI look at all. The skin and hair look great.

I don't understand why it's taken this long to figure out those basic concepts. Maybe they were getting a lot of "I don't know, it just doesn't look REAL" from people, but I know if they'd have asked ME I'd have told them immediately several issues they needed to fix. And this seems to address most of them. Right now the jerky major movements are the biggest issue.

Re:realistic looking

[gl4ss]

realistic looking is just a trick of the eye for few seconds.

but it's easy. I mean, it's just an artisan straightforward job to make it look "real", it's not even a triumph if they manage it - except if they plan a career in special effects. the article could be renamed "boring danish geezer orders an animatronic from a japanese company with his face with public danish funds".

the rest of it, making it act like a man when nobody knows how a man should act is quite different. it can frown now, but it's just a clockwork animation, my sock puppet can laugh too.

Confusing title

[zill]

Android Copy of Danish Man Unveiled

OK, who else thought "Danish Man" was the name of game that's being ported to Android?

Re:Confusing title

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Android Copy of Danish Man Unveiled

OK, who else thought "Danish Man" was the name of game that's being ported to Android?

Not me, but frankly we're more likely to see androids being built than popular games being ported to Android.

Re:Confusing title

[wierd_w]

The adventures of Danish Man and Bun Boy, in "The sticky sweetness of the uncanny valley!" Coming to an Android platform near you!

can you download the app in the official market?

[youn]

am I the only one who thought it was more news about google's smarphone/tablet platform? :)

androids are cool... but definitely fooled me for half a second

FYI:Geminoid

[camperdave]

Just an FYI folks: "Geminoid" is a registered trademark of Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International.

!ultra

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

The Geminoid family, a series of ultra-realistic androids, each a copy of a real person, has a new member

A bit realistic perhaps, but definitely not ultra. I've bothered to actually watch the fine video, and the movements are still on the near side of the creepy valley. As for its classification as an android, really, it's not even a talking head, just little more than an animated wax dummy, able to blink and sigh but incapable of a decent conversation. The main use I see for this is in big budget Hollywood movies where you have to blow up your star actor. But CG can service that department fairly well already.

Re:!ultra

[tomhudson]

big budget Hollywood movies where you have to blow up your star actor

if he's a Scientologist then who cares?

Perfect - A movie starring Charlie Sheen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Tom Cruise, where Cruise gets blown up. You could call it Mission:Impossible - Two and a Half Men!

Re:!ultra

[Hojima]

I've bothered to actually watch the fine video, and the movements are still on the near side of the creepy valley.

Saying that it's a bit creepy is like saying that Nazis are a bit anti-semitic. If I saw that thing in my room I wouldn't rest until a priest douses its ashes with holy water.

Re:!ultra

[HungryHobo]

surprisingly enough many people are almost the opposite.

If you get too far into the uncanny vally people can be hostile but stay well back and people will relate to machines just fine, they won't relate to them as people but they'll be fine thinking of them like really smart pets/animals.

I came across a lovely article a while back.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050501009_pf.html

People are quite ready to treat machines as they would animals, even going so far as to consider something that's happening to a bot to be inhumane.

"The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.

This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.

Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.

The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.

The colonel ordered the test stopped.

Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?

The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.

This test, he charged, was inhumane. "

It might be easier to get people to bond to a machine as they would a guidedog rather than as they would to another human.

The veteran explosives technician looming over Bogosh was visibly upset. He insisted he did not want a new robot. He wanted Scooby-Doo back.

"Sometimes they get a little emotional over it," Bogosh says. "Like having a pet dog. It attacks the IEDs, comes back, and attacks again. It becomes part of the team, gets a name. They get upset when anything happens to one of the team. They identify with the little robot quickly. They count on it a lot in a mission."

Re:Can you...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Ah yes. Japanese and Danes. The most expressive people on planet earth.

When they make an Italian, wake me up.

Animatronic vs. Robot

[orkysoft]

This robot is really just an animatronic device, like they have at Disneyland (or so I hear). It's controlled by someone behind the scenes using a computer. The purpose is to study how people interact with it, knowing that it's not real. The interesting thing about regular robots is that they're supposed to control themselves, and research concentrates not just on designing new kinds of sensors and actuators (limbs) and body plans, but especially the software to control them.

Still, it looks very impressive, but I'm not sure how this progresses the development of sensors, actuators, or control software. It seems more like a sophisticated crafts project to me. Are the researchers also going to have test subjects interact with a non-realistic human-shaped robot to see how they react to it, to compare with the realistic looking one?

Not Quite Human

[nmb3000]

The pictures and video are pretty interesting, but also awfully short. It would be neat to see some combined expressions rather than just simple blinking and mouth movement. Speaking of the movement in the video, was anyone else reminded of Not Quite Human? Haven't thought about that movie in quite a while :)

Also, can anyone say "uncanny valley"? They've definitely made progress, but there's still something... not quite right about it. Considering that the easiest part of creating an android is probably the static external features such as skin, hair, and eyes (lots of practice from movie/TV makeup), it's interesting that a still photo still triggers the cues which tell us "that's not real."

Now only a few things left to do:

1. Create an evil twin bent death, carnage, and annihilation
3. ???
4. Profit! (well, that, or doom the human race)

Re:Sex with yourself

[orphiuchus]

It would just be masturbation, which is perfectly natural.

Re:Just saying what you're thinking.

[Foobar of Borg]

A robot doesn't have to perfectly mimic a human to be commercially viable, just be close enough to be convincing in the dark.

Actually, if it perfectly mimicked a human being, it wouldn't be economically viable. Imagine, after some robo-sex, the fem-bot starts asking "So, when do you want to get married?" or "Why can't we live together? There is no reason for us to pay two rents."

Data upload

[macraig]

I think Brent Spiner should be Geminoided next. Can you imagine the convention possibilities? Trekkies everywhere will be wetting their pants.