Female Androids Come to Life

Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who is famous for creating a robotic duplicate of himself a few years ago, is back to creeping out the entire world, this time with a female android. Geminoid F, as she’s called, can smile, laugh and even display “emotions.” As you’ll see in the video, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish between the robot and the woman she was modeled after.






From IEEE Spectrum:

Geminoid HI-1 [is] designed to be remote controlled by an operator. In a press conference in Osaka, Ishiguro demonstrated how the android could mimic the facial expressions of the woman as she sat in front of a computer with cameras and face-tracking software.

[The team] wanted to create an android that could exhibit a wide range of natural expressions. … In particular, they wanted the robot to sport a convincing smile.

Facial recognition software used to make more humanlike robots? Fantastic. But the end result still looks like an invader from from the uncanny valley.