Toshiba
builds computers, right?
To
add to the pages of sci-fi happening as we speak, humanlike robots are in
development that will come near to mimicking human emotions and facial
expressions. These robots are in their infancy but amazing!
Toshiba
has introduced Junko Chihira, a most realistic human-like android they’ve named Junko
Chihira. She is 5’5”, 26 years old, and
her birthday is 6/1. She works in a new
tourist information center in Japan. The android speaks Japanese, Chinese, and English—handy if you
work in the tourist trade.
A female android named
Geminoid F stars in a Japanese film from director Koji Fukada called "Sayonara," which
premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
Erika is a creation of
Osaka University, Koyo University, and ATR. She was ‘born’ in Japan in 2015.
When Erika is listening, she blinks and moves her eyes and head, like a human.
The following link is a YouTube video of Erika and a child, illustration AI’s
possibilities with children. She,q too, is pretty and interacts well. She
pauses while she processes in this conversation, but her answers do not sound
at all scripted but real-time.
But probably the most
life-like is the android Sophia by Hanson Robotics. Sophia has appeared on The
Tonight Show was well as addressed a UN committee. She has been granted
citizenship by Saudi Arabia.
Hanson boasts other
robots, one designed to look like Einstein. Just a few of the many are:
Philip K. Dick II was
debuted in 2005, designed by David Hanson as a robotic paean of
sci-fi writer of the same name. The original Philip K. Dick android was lost on
a flight from Dallas to San Francisco in late 2005. However, in 2011 Hanson
Robotics, together with Dutch broadcasting firm VPRO, developed a new version,
including state of the art computer vision technology and employs 36
servomotors to power a complex and wide range of facial expressions. These
days, PKD serves researchers at the Apollo Mind Initiative.
Jules was activated in 2006 and debuted
at the Wired Nextfest that year, Hanson Robotics and partner Personality Forge
created Jules for the University of West England in Bristol. Still in residence
at UWE, Jules incorporates a number of advanced technologies that make him an
eerily realistic and conversant android, including natural language AI,
computer vision and facial tracking.
From Hanson’s website: “On the tree of robotic life, human-like robots play a
particularly valuable role. It makes sense. Humans are brilliant, beautiful,
compassionate, lovable, and capable of love, so why shouldn’t we aspire to
make robots human-like in these ways? Don’t we want robots to have such
marvelous capabilities as love, compassion, and genius?”
~*~
In Love For Sale, concurrently available from The Wild Rose
Press, a divorced dreamer buys a sentient android who is totally human-like, as
her companion, and they fall in love. That’s only the beginning of their story.
There are forces from his past and his future that threaten their happiness—and
their life. COMING THIS SUMMER: - Life for Sale, the sequel.
