kokoro

Tokyo store's female android looking for love

Ah, Valentine's Day. It's just around the corner, so have you thought about how you'll express your love for your favorite inanimate object? Humans are so passe.

Japanese retailers have a suggestion. They're setting geek hearts aflutter with a pretty, ageless female android who's looking for love.

Clutching a bag and cell phone, she seems to be waiting for a suitor.

"Android falls in love? She is waiting for you" reads the writing on her glass box at Takashimaya Department Store in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.

The special Valentine's display features Geminoid F, the photogenic robot developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and colleagues. … Read more

Geminoid clone-bot hipper than human original

Here's a nifty way to preserve your youth and popularity: get Japanese entertainment company Kokoro to make an ageless robot clone of yourself.

Danish academic Henrik Scharfe did just that and his clone looks ready to get out and party. Or perhaps play the villain in a reboot of "Die Hard."

Aalborg University's Scharfe (no relation to Alan Rickman) has been working with Kokoro and Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) to create Geminoid DK, a lifelike android copy of himself. DK follows in the silicon footsteps of Geminoids HI-1 and F1, developed in collaboration with Osaka University roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, father of the Telenoid robo-fetus.

Scharfe plans to test his clone at ATR and then ship it back to the new Geminoid Lab in Denmark, where he presides over Aalborg University's Center for Computer-mediated Epistemology.

Geminoids are basically remote-controlled slave robots powered by a quiet air servo system. They mimic the facial expressions, lip movements, and body motions of a human user through motion-tracking gear and an Internet link. As the vid below shows, Scharfe's clone is already quite lifelike. So when it starts projecting his voice and mimicking his idiosyncrasies, students may freak a bit. See more videos and pics here. I love its evil sideways glance. … Read more

Yikes! Diego the robot baby wants some love

The pics may beggar belief, but apparently another robot baby is in the works.

Just when you'd almost forgotten Osaka University's infamous and creepy Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, researchers in the U.S. are preparing to unleash an almost equally terrifying robo-babe: Diego.

These images from a newsletter (PDF) published by Japanese android maker Kokoro (creator of fembot Actroid) show UC San Diego professor Javier Movellan and others with the cyber-tot.

Though it looks like someone has photoshopped a doll's head into the pics, apparently Movellan really is working on a humanoid based on a … Read more

For sale: Your robot clone

Japanese robot maker Kokoro, best known for its Actroid line of ultra-lifelike androids, will make robot clones of people in a special limited-time offer.

The New Year promotion is being offered via select department stores in Japan. People willing to pay about $225,000 can have themselves recreated in robot form, with their robot clone having exactly the same face, hair, eyes, and body.

Kokoro will also model the buyer's voice, facial expressions, and upper-body movements to create the most lifelike doppelganger possible.

The Actroid and Geminoid androids are powered by a quiet air servo system that moves their … Read more

Gadgettes 138: The Type A Episode

If it's not a right angle, it's a wrong angle. That's exactly the ethos that has inspired the type of precise, structured and rigidly useful gadgetry that we highlight in today's episode.

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EPISODE 138

The perfect father’s day gift for the Type A griller

Size your burgers your way

Cocoon’s laptop bag is perfect for type A personalities

Sensor-laden kokoro adjusts playlist to match the rhythm of your heart

GameDr destroys recreation of youth

Sony’s 400-disc BDP-CX7000ES Blu-ray Mega Changer reportedly coming soon… Read more