Saturday, March 21, 2009

I am cybernetic human HRP-4C

Japanese researchers have showed off a robot that will soon strut its stuff down a Tokyo catwalk.

The girlie-faced humanoid with slightly oversized eyes, a tiny nose and a shoulder length hair boasts 42 motion motors programmed to mimic the movements of flesh-and-blood fashion models.

"Hello everybody, I am cybernetic human HRP-4C," the futuristic fashionista said, opening its media premiere at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology outside Tokyo.

The fashion-bot is 158 centimetres tall, the average height of Japanese women aged 19 to 29, but weighs in at a waif-like 43 kilograms, including batteries.

She has a manga-inspired human face but a silver metallic body.

"If we had made the robot too similar to a real human, it would have been uncanny," one of the inventors, humanoid research leader Shuji Kajita said.

"We have deliberately leaned toward an anime style."

The institute said the robot "has been developed mainly for use in the entertainment industry" but is not for sale at the moment.

Hamming it up before photographers and television crews, the seductive cyborg struck poses, flashed bright smiles and pouted sulkily according to commands transmitted wirelessly from journalists via bluetooth devices.

The performance fell short of flawless when it occasionally mixed up its facial expressions - a mistake the inventors put down to a case of the nerves as a hail of camera shutters confused its sound recognition sensors.

The preview was a warm-up for the robot's appearance at a Tokyo fashion show on March 23.

Like its real-life counterparts, robot model HRP-4C commands a hefty price - the institute said developing her cost more than 200 million yen (US$3 million).
- AFP

"The product of the human brain has escaped the control of human hands. This is the comedy of science." Rossum, in Karel Capek's play R.U.R.

"If you do not speak English, I am at your disposal with 187 other languages along with their various dialects and sub-tongues." Robby the Robot (Forbidden Planet)

"The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

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