A New and Incredibly Realistic Geminoid Robot

Robots move from being tools to becoming media, just as computers did a while back. The times of seeing robots as just tools are over, said one of the developers of the latest Geminoid robotic clone. Entertainment company Kokoro in Japan can create ageless robot clones of people who want to preserve their looks for a while. The last one they created is a clone of the Danish professor Henrik Scharfe from Aalborg University, and the model is extremely lifelike.

The Danish academic has been collaborating with the Japanese company and with Japan’s ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International) in Japan, and they created the Geminoid DK robotic clone. This humanoid robot is the little “brother” of two other Geminoid robots – the Geminoid HI-1 and the Geminoid F1, which were built with the assistance of Hiroshi Ishiguro, a roboticist at the Osaka University.

The Geminoid robots are powered through a silent air servo system. The models can imitate face expressions, upper body motions and lip movements which are copied with the help of equipment for tracking motions and a link to the Internet. All the robot’s movements are controlled remotely by a computer operator. Basically the robot will turn its head and move its mouth just like the original. Hopefully, in the future, they will become autonomous.

The purpose for building the twin robot is research. The object of research will be human-robot interaction and potential emotional links, the “blended presence”. The research teams will also look at the cultural differences in the way robots are perceived on different continents.

The First to Move Out of Japan

Henrik Scharfe will test his robotic twin at the ATR in Japan and then book the android a trip to Denmark, where the robot will become part of the new Geminoid Lab.

The plan is that Geminoid DK will become an advocate for the advancement of android philosophy and science as a means to find answers to some of the questions that scientists have been trying to answer, such as what defines a human, presence, relation identity.

The Geminoid Lab in Denmark, established at the Aalborg University, will become the Geminoid DK’s next home where it will assist researchers in their studies on Human Robot Interaction (HRI). Geminoid DK is the third in the series of lifelike robots produced by Kokoro.

The Geminoid HI-1 was created by Hiroshi Ishiguro in 2005. It was followed by Geminoid-F (F comes from female) in March-April 2010. The F version was the “clone” of a Japanese young woman in her 20s. It was a less complex and more affordable version than the Geminoid HI-1.

CNET