android

Geminoid Top 5: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, the Scary and the Beautiful

by Socrates

Geminoid is a robot-twin — i.e. an (almost) identical mechanical copy, of an actual human being. For the past several years I have been totally fascinated by the incredible progress in life-like geminoid technology and decided to compile a short list with the top 5 most impressive robots. Geminoid DK was constructed to look exactly like Associate Professor Henrik Scharfe of Aalborg University in Denmark. The robot is going to be used for researching “emotional affordances” in human-robot interaction, the novel notion of “blended presence,” as well as cultural differences (from different continents) in the perception of robots. All of the movements and expressions of Geminoid DK are remote controlled by an operator with a computer, who uses a motion-capture system that tracks facial expressions and head movements. Though it is still pretty far from the final version this geminoid [...]

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Singularity News: Japan’s Robot Actors and Virtual Singers Take The Center Stage

by Socrates

A robot android actress, designed and created by Hiroshi Ishiguro and called geminoid F, debuts on Tokyo’s theater stage. (Original Reuters News report by Tara Cleary) A virtual singer called Hatsune Miku performs along real musicians Hatsune Miku (初音ミク) is a singing synthesizer application embodied by a female cartoon character, developed by Crypton Future Media and uses Yamaha’s Vocaloid synthesizing technology. The name of the character comes from a fusion of the Japanese for first (初, hatsu), sound (音, ne) and future (Miku (ミク), referring to her position as the first of Crypton’s “Character Vocal Series”. Her voice is sampled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita. In the videos below Hatsune Miku performs onstage in what appears to be a dynamic hologram but is actually a 2D projection on a transparent screen. Related articles Robot Worker: Enter The HRP-4 (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com)

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