Angeline and I went to the KC to see the ballet last night. They are having this celebration of Japan’s “hyperculture,” whatever that means. But one thing it means is there are robots there!
Actually, the robot display is somewhat disappointing. Asimo and the trumpet player thing are there for occasional demonstrations, but they weren’t out on the floor when we were there. So, the only robots we got to see were this little yellow thing that supposedly can talk (only in Japanese, however), a small menagerie of Aibo-like toys, and the creepy “Actroid” DER2, pictured. DER2 does look somewhat realistic, actually, but you wouldn’t mistake it for a real person. You can ask it canned questions, then it will do the speech recognition stuff and say a canned response. Eye-rolling stuff such as, “I’m looking for a guy with a heart of gold and brain circuits to match!”
Still, robots!
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