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IronFist
01-11-2003, 01:51 AM
This quiz is awesome (http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/giantrobot/)

The last question is the best.

IronFist

FatherDog
01-11-2003, 02:37 AM
I'm Bender. Rock on! With blackjack! And hookers!

SevenStar
01-11-2003, 02:47 AM
Check it out, you're an ABC Warrior!

In bars frequented by colossal death robots, you're always the quiet guy at the back who no-one ever bothers. And for good reason. You've fought in several nuclear wars, could beat the sun in a staring match, and have a chin larger than many articles of furniture. Morals are not a concept you understand, but strangely enough, nobody ever questions your judgement. Usually because they're dead. Even Judge Dredd wets himself when you turn up. Grrrr.

Crimson Phoenix
01-11-2003, 02:50 AM
LOL

I'm Optimus Prime...

GunnedDownAtrocity
01-11-2003, 02:55 AM
"you are a bit of a lightweight in the colossal death league, but you do mutter "kill all humans" in your sleep - and after all, it's the thought that counts. We love you because you drink, steal, smoke cigars and gamble away things that aren't even yours"

sounds about right.

IronFist
01-11-2003, 02:55 AM
Seven, I was an ABC Warrior, too. What is he from?

IronFist

SevenStar
01-11-2003, 03:11 AM
judge dredd

Xebsball
01-11-2003, 06:42 AM
Hey ho, you're Calibretto!

Kick. Arse.

Five metric tonnes of hulking, steam powered robo-meat, you are the pin-up boy for death robot technology. Although you are in fact a war golem, you know how to use a minigun, and you can benchpress small settlements. Relatively new to the colossal death robot scene, you were first pencilled by comic legend Joe Maduriera in 1998. Sensitive, stylish, and yet still massive, if you were female and not made of iron I would probably propose to you.

neptunesfall
01-11-2003, 06:52 AM
You are Gigantor!

Born in 1963, You are possibly the original colossal death robot, being one of the patriarchs of the current crop, and definitely an advocate of old-skool enemy-bashing. Why use a clumsy particle weapon when you can create supernovas just by flexing your arms? Your one minor weakness is that you are entirely dominated by some kid with a remote contol - still, don't let it get you down. You can sink a nuclear submarine with jazz music.

IronFist
01-11-2003, 11:41 AM
Why use a clumsy particle weapon when you can create supernovas just by flexing your arms?

lol, that's the best question I've ever heard!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

IronFist

Sasha
01-11-2003, 11:59 AM
mm, me Gigantor too!

Radhnoti
01-11-2003, 01:23 PM
Robocop?!? I thought I was supposed to be a GIANT robot. Blasted surveys....I never get a cool answer.

;)

The Willow Sword
01-11-2003, 01:27 PM
Calibretto as well. haha pretty kewl xebby;)

dnc101
01-11-2003, 09:37 PM
'Inspector Gadget".

! Sh!t !!!

PHILBERT
01-11-2003, 09:50 PM
Robocop.

Chang Style Novice
01-11-2003, 09:55 PM
My favorite test at http://www.rumandmonkey.com is the "are you ****ed?" test. I wish we could cut and paste the html for our answers in here, because they look great and are hilarious.

I'll be reincarnated, as it turns out.

SevenStar
01-11-2003, 09:56 PM
Originally posted by dnc101
'Inspector Gadget".

! Sh!t !!!

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

Go, go gadget qi!!! :D :D

Radhnoti
01-11-2003, 10:59 PM
Sheesh dnc...I thought mine was bad, but you win hands down. :D

KungFuGuy!
01-12-2003, 12:14 AM
I took this a while ago and got Megatron. It said I was a badass death robot, which made me feel tingly.

FatherDog
01-19-2003, 12:41 AM
IronFist & CSN:

The ABC Warriors are from 2000AD, an ancient and excellent sci-fi comic mag published in Great Britain. They published a lot of Jamie Hewlett's early work, and all of the original Judge Dredd stuff was in 2000AD, before it came out under it's own title. ABC Warriors was actually a separate series from Judge Dredd, that took place in the same universe but in a different (ill-defined) time from the events in most of the Judge Dredd stories.

If you saw the (bad) Judge Dredd movie, the big robot that the villain uses as a henchman is visually modeled after the ABC Warriors, who are basically a military platoon of robot commandos.

IronFist
01-19-2003, 12:49 PM
Thanks for the info, FatherDog.

IronFist

IronFist
01-19-2003, 12:54 PM
Originally posted by Chang Style Novice
My favorite test at http://www.rumandmonkey.com is the "are you ****ed?" test. I wish we could cut and paste the html for our answers in here, because they look great and are hilarious.

I'll be reincarnated, as it turns out.

Every single thing I picked, ended in reincarnated.

Wait, once I got Valhalla by changing one answer, but I went back and randomly picked stuff a few times and got reincarnated each time.

IronFist

Sho
01-19-2003, 12:55 PM
I'm Calibretto! Kick. Arse. :D

TjD
01-19-2003, 01:21 PM
gigantor baby yeah!

SevenStar
01-19-2003, 02:03 PM
Originally posted by IronFist


Every single thing I picked, ended in reincarnated.

Wait, once I got Valhalla by changing one answer, but I went back and randomly picked stuff a few times and got reincarnated each time.

IronFist

I got purgatory

SevenStar
01-19-2003, 02:09 PM
Though you are leaving this life in God's grace, you haven't quite been able to stop youself from sinning. Our God is an angry God, and requires that you serve your time in limbo before you pass through the pearly gates. Some theologians believe that while you are resting here you won't know that eventually you will reach heaven, causing terrible doubts and hopeless speculation. Good luck.

TjD
01-19-2003, 03:00 PM
i got valhalla baby

You will die a warrior and be spirited away by warbling wenches to the Hall of the Slain. Meat and mead for ever more, well until Ragnarok, anyway, when you will do battle with giants, giantesses, dwarfs, elves and Nidhug, a dragon who likes to nibble trees. Odin is great!


sweeeet

Chang Style Novice
01-19-2003, 05:54 PM
It sorta makes sense that purgatory would be an Edward Hopper painting, too.

GeneChing
07-15-2016, 09:18 AM
This is how it begins. Next thing you know, we'll all be slaves to SkyNet.


Shopping center docks robot cops after child hit, injured (http://www.sfgate.com/news/us/article/Shopping-center-docks-robot-cops-after-child-hit-8363373.php)
Updated 9:30 am, Thursday, July 14, 2016

Palo Alto start up Knightscope has created a robot that fights crime. The K5 Security bots record high definition video, and low def infrared, which is all sent back to their security network. The bots are being used at several tech offices and malls in S
Media: WochIt Media

A Peninsula shopping center has temporarily docked its futuristic security robots after one of the mechanical guards reportedly ran into and hurt a toddler.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that the 5-foot-tall, 300-pound robot collided with the 16-month-old child, knocking him face down on the ground. The robot then rolled over the boy's right foot, leaving swelling and a scrape on his leg. No one else was injured.

http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/47/54/44/10406178/3/920x920.jpg
Hannah Stulbarg, 12, guides her cousin Zach Hensersky, 3, past a Knightscope K5 autonomous security robot as it roams around the Stanford Shopping Center June 15, 2016 in Palo Alto, Calif. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

The Stanford Shopping Center introduced the gliding "K5" robots last year. The robot uses cameras and sensors to monitor and report suspicious activity while hopefully deterring crime with its watchful presence, the newspaper reported.
Speaking about the robots, a mall representative emphasized that the center prioritizes shoppers' safety. The robots are used at other facilities, including Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers.

Knightscope is in Mountain View, just across the bay from our office. Our copy editor (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?56820-KFTC-copy-editor-Gary-Shockley) took me past it a month or so ago. The bots circle Knightscope's parking lot at night, beeping, surveilling, and biding their time until the Terminator units are developed.

GeneChing
09-26-2016, 01:30 PM
I'm sure there will be more robot news. Heck, soon it'll just be robots posting, and they will admire me for their foresight.


Robots patrol Chinese airport (https://www.socialnews.xyz/2016/09/26/robots-patrol-chinese-airport/)

POSTED BY: GOPI SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

Beijing, Sep 26 (IANS) Chinese Shenzhen International Airport has employed robots to patrol one of its terminals, making it the first public place in the country to be so guarded.

The Anbot robots are oval-shaped and resemble the Star Wars 'R2D2' robot or the Daleks from Doctor Who, EFE news reported.

The bot's face has a digital display and a high-definition camera to take pictures of travellers at one of the country's busiest airports for analysis.

The role of these devices, for now, is similar to that of a security camera, but with greater mobility as they can move at speeds of up to 18 kph.

They are also equipped with a defence mechanism: an extendable arm that produces an electrical current.

AnBot was developed by a university in the central city of Changsha and may be used to patrol schools and banks.

The robots can also look for explosives, weapons and drugs and are priced at $15,000.

One second thought, they will probably just grind me into the earth under their tank treads. :(

GeneChing
12-05-2016, 08:59 AM
...it's going to be that kind of week, is it? :eek:


https://fsmedia.imgix.net/0d/b5/d6/43/39ff/4e67/9074/d9680fa9727a/1062837515007646135278421438769531827726299njpgoh4 c4cab4d65117eef3bed6075c46fd445oe58bc8497.jpeg?rec t=0,26,960,480&dpr=2&auto=format,compress&q=75
https://www.inverse.com/article/24148-sex-robot-blowjob-cafe-london-bradley-charvet?utm_source=huffpo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=outreach
"You could not imagine how many people are ready to give sex robots a try."
Gabe Bergado Sex November 22, 2016

Bradley Charvet wants to change men’s morning routines. The sex industry entrepreneur already caught the attention of people earlier this year with his plan to open up a fellatio cafe in Switzerland. Based off Thailand’s blowjob bars, the idea is that a guy can come in to order a cup of joe and an escort. The wrinkle at the center of Charvet’s vision: The escorts are robots. That means he can open in London and expand aggressively in countries with less permissive sex work legislation.

The cafe will be open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and serve coffee, sex, and pastries. Charvet points to scholarship, including Dr. Debby Herbenick’s famous book (for women), Because It Feels Good, that supports his claim about ejaculation being a good way to start the day. With talking sex robots with warm genitals on their way, Charvet thinks the pump is primed, as it were.


Inverse spoke to Charvet about his vision, the diminishing importance of privacy, pricing, and the robots he’s looking to hire.

So what was your inspiration for the fellatio cafe in Switzerland? What made you want to open a sex robot cafe in London, and why specifically that city?

The London public is willing to engage with the idea and, like Geneva, London is one of the world’s most popular cities for business. You can find tons of escorts and mistresses everywhere.

Do you think that means that the public there wants robots?

Brothels with human workers in London are not legal. Robots were not a choice. And it’s not ridiculous to think about this idea right now. You could not imagine how many people are ready to give sex robots a try in 2016. We asked thousands of potential customers and they were very curious and eager. There is an opportunity in being the first to provide that service.

Have you started looking into buying the robots already? What companies are buying from and how much are you investing in each robot?

We are in discussions with a company called MySiliconeLoveDoll to do a test quite soon. We are thinking about a rental service. Prices are between $1,000 and $3,000.

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/6d/d4/05/7b/c9f5/4e75/941d/2d15dd75b046/mysiliconelovedolls-are-unnaturally-well-endowed-they-are-also-terrible-conversationalists.jpeg?rect=0,0,1280,640&dpr=2&auto=format,compress&q=75
MySiliconeLoveDolls are unnaturally well endowed. They are also terrible conversationalists.

From what I’ve read, you’re only going to have female sex robots. What are your plans for male sex robots to serve customers of other genders and sexualities?

At the moment, we don’t have an expected date for that, but it is in the works. FaceGirl is going to develop the first Café Pipe. Bumpix is going to develop the second one in London. It’s going to be huge.

We would like to open it in Paddington. There will probably be decisions to make on that front soon. Well see if it happens.

You’re pricing a caffè americano and 15-minute session for £60.00. How did you come up with these prices?

We did not want to change anyone’s routine; we just wanted to introduce another idea, another concept. Our goal was not to compete with London’s escorts so we settled on a price in keeping with that market.

Sex workers are suffering because so many people offer low price services. We respect them and don’t want to oppose their interests.

How are you setting up the cafe so that there’s privacy for each customer?

We’ll create two box-like areas, but most of the time clients will get a blowjob at the bar.

What do you expect the clean up process after each robot is used to be like?

We are discussing a solution with the doll company. It’s going to be more or less like escorts are doing at the moment.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Photos via My Silicone Love Doll, Facebook

GeneChing
01-11-2017, 11:49 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a50J8t3bbIA

GeneChing
04-04-2017, 02:43 PM
Terminator got it wrong. It won't be Skynet. This is how it starts.


Would YOU marry a robot? Chinese engineer gives up on search for a spouse and builds his own 'wifebot' (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4376804/Engineer-gives-search-spouse-marries-robot.html?ITO=applenews)

Zheng Jiajia is a 31-year-old AI expert who built the robot at the end of last year
According to Chinese media, he married the bot after failing to find a spouse
'Yingying' can identify Chinese characters and images, and say a few words
The creator has plans to upgrade her so she can walk and help with chores

By Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com
PUBLISHED: 15:05 EDT, 3 April 2017 | UPDATED: 15:21 EDT, 3 April 2017

Fed up after years of searching for a human spouse to no avail, a Chinese engineer has ‘married’ a robot.

Zheng Jiajia is a 31-year-old artificial intelligence expert, and built his future ‘wife’ at the end of last year, according to the South China Morning Post.

Named Yingying, the bizarre robot can identify Chinese characters and images, and even say a few simple words, and the creator has plans to upgrade the bot so she’ll one day be able to walk and do chores around the house.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/03/19/3EE8A0D500000578-4376804-image-a-28_1491244790811.jpg
Fed up after years of searching for a human spouse to no avail, a Chinese engineer has ‘married’ a robot. Zheng Jiajia is a 31-year-old artificial intelligence expert and built his future ‘wife’ at the end of last year


WOULD YOU MARRY A ROBOT?

Humans will marry robots in the next 35 years, according to a sex robot expert.

Not only this, but sex with robots will become more enjoyable than with other humans, because of the advancement of artificial intelligence, he said.

'The first marriage will be before, not after 2050,' best-selling author and robot expert Dr David Levy said during the Love and Sex with Robots conference at Goldsmiths University, London.

The pair ‘married’ on Friday in a simple ceremony in which the robot was adorned with a traditional red scarf over her head.

Zheng’s mother and friends attended the wedding, and told local news sources that the move came after Zheng grew frustrated in his search to find a girlfriend, according to SCMP.

Zheng is a former Huawei employee, and now works at Dream Town in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province after leaving the telecom firm in 2014.

While the marriage may seem bizarre, experts have increasingly warned that robot-human relationships will become far more common in the years to come.

One researcher recently claimed humans will marry robots in the next 35 years.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/03/19/3EE8A0DA00000578-4376804-image-a-29_1491244983956.jpg
Named Yingying, the bizarre robot can identify Chinese characters and images, and even say a few simple words, and the creator has plans to upgrade the bot so she’ll one day be able to walk and do chores around the house


WHO WOULD BENEFIT FROM SEX ROBOTS?

'The hypothetical applications of sex robots and related products, part of a field called technosexuality, seem endless,' counsellor Ian Kerner said.

'I could see couples using them to enact fantasies, such as a threesome, that they might not feel comfortable trying with real people. '

He also said it could allow couples to work through differences that might otherwise cause them to separate.

'If one partner has a higher libido, a robot could allow him or her to enjoy a fulfilling sex life without straying.

'And robots might help couples break out of sex ruts by adding spice to their relationship or maintaining long-distance romances.'

Not only this, but sex with robots will become more enjoyable than with other humans, because of the advancement of artificial intelligence, said London-based Dr David Levy, author of 'Love and Sex with Robots'.

And, he says robots will be more attractive than their human counterparts.

'The first marriage will be before, not after 2050,' best-selling author and robot expert Dr David Levy said during the Love and Sex with Robots conference in London.

While the claims may seem ridiculous to some, 'sex and love with robots at a human level may appear to be a long way off, but the future has a way of laughing at you,' he said.

The conference attracted experts from across the world to provide a vision of how sex with robots will look in the future, but it is not all good.

Nearly half of men could see themselves buying a sex robot in the near future but, if they are not careful, the tireless robots could push their human lovers over the edge.

The findings come from two key presentations at the conference that suggest robots will become an increasingly popular companion in the bedroom, warranting a system of ethics for their development and use.

In one study, presented at the conference at Goldsmiths, University of London, the researchers surveyed 263 heterosexual males between the ages of 18 and 67.

Participants were shown two-minute videos of female humanoid robots.

The team also conducted ‘personality measures’ and ‘attractiveness ratings.’

Then, the men were asked whether they would buy such a robot for themselves now or within the next five years.

The study revealed a staggering number of men admitted they would buy a sex robot, with 40.3 per cent of participants responding in this way.


THE HUMANOID 'GODDESS' JIA JIA
Jia Jia is a humanoid robot who is not only scarily lifelike, but intelligent and quick-witted too.

The female robot has been called a 'robot goddess' by her hordes of online fans, and some who met her at a recent exhibition were taken aback by her lifelike appearance.

It took the team three years to complete the robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner.

The humanoid is programmed to recognize human/machine interaction, has autonomous position and navigation and offers services based on cloud technology.

This humanoid has natural eye movement, speech that is in sync with its lip movement and refers to its male creators as 'lords'.

Previously, Dr Levy also said in the future it will be common to find sex robots modelled on celebrities.

'You can imagine people saying, "I've got a sex robot who looks like Angelina Jolie and she's fabulous in bed!"' he said.

He also said celebrities could be set to make a lot of money out of the venture.

'If you’re Angelina Jolie and there’s a company manufacturing a high-quality product, and you’re getting a royalty of £1,000-2,000 [$1,200-$2,500] for each one, you could make even more millions than you've got just by licensing your appearance,' he said.

Any celebrity would need to consent in their image being used in this way.

Punch.HeadButt
04-12-2017, 10:30 AM
This IS how it starts, man. Manipulation through sex, classic espionage trope. Skynet has started infiltrating our engineering community. Soon our engineers will turn against us in the name of the robots they love.

Can't they just connect a smartphone stand to a fleshlight? Ask Siri who her daddy is?

GeneChing
04-26-2017, 12:28 PM
These robots are wimps and easily defeated by drunken style (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=128).


Police: Armless robot loses fight to drunk man (http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Police-Armless-robot-loses-fight-to-drunk-man-11098199.php)
on April 25, 2017

http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/52/64/25/11224435/3/920x920.jpg
Photo: Stacy Dean Stephens, HONS
Knightscope K5 security robots patrol alongside a pier in San Diego. The robots are designed to sense intruders at odd hours. One in working in Mountain View las week was assaulted, police said.Knightscope K5 security robots patrol alongside a pier in San Diego. The robots are designed to sense intruders at odd hours. One in working in Mountain View las week was assaulted, police said.

A 41-year-old Mountain View man was facing charges after he allegedly picked a fight with a 5-foot-tall, 300-pound security robot.

The robot, named K5, has no arms, so it wasn't a fair fight. In fact, K5 can't really defend itself, unless you count occasionally spinning in a circle and whistling as a defensive skill.

The Knightscope droid was knocked down on its back — or maybe its front, it's hard to tell due to K5's nose-cone physique — while patrolling the parking lot near Terra Bella and Linda Vista Avenue, according to ABC7 News.

Police identified the robot assailant as Jason Sylvain, who they said was drunk. Sylvain is accused of prowling and public intoxication.

Knightscope said the robot suffered only scratches in last week's incident and is now back on the job. The company told ABC7 that "it's a testament to the technology that police caught the aggressor and booked in him jail."

The mallcop is going to have some company. Silicon Valley startup Knightscope believes that security robots can help take a bite out of the crime that costs the American economy $1 trillion every year. Knightscope CEO William Santana Li says his robots are already on duty in several key California locations including the Sacramento Kings arena, the Microsoft campus and Westfield Valley Fair in San Jose. The robots are designed to detect and report anomalies, which help existing human security personnel perform better and stay safer. Video provided by TheStreet

An overgrown R2D2 look-alike, the K5 is designed to alert security guards to disturbances and detect known shoplifters with its camera, which evidently captured the assault. They are rented out to companies for about $7 an hour.

A K5 unit made headlines in July when it ran over a 16-month toddler, hurting his leg and foot, at the Stanford Shopping Mall.

GeneChing
04-27-2017, 10:36 AM
These posts are easing my trepidations of the robot apocalypse. Looks like they will just take our jobs instead of gunning us down full-auto like the Terminator. In all fairness though, the answer to where the Great Wall of China is would be China for me too. What was she supposed to say? Badaling? And her English is better than my Chinese. :o



Back to humanoid school: 'Robot goddess' Jia Jia forgets where the Great Wall of China is in awkward first English interview
Jia Jia failed to mask her inabilities to get to grips with the English language (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4450810/Robot-goddess-Jia-Jia-humanoid-school.html)

When asked where the Great Wall of China was she just replied 'China'
Observers watching the conversation on live stream expressed disappointment

By PHOEBE WESTON FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 04:53 EDT, 27 April 2017 | UPDATED: 05:36 EDT, 27 April 2017

China's talking robot Jia Jia had a dismal first interview in English where she forgot where the Great Wall of China was.

The mechanical marvel has been sent back to humanoid school to hone her skills after stumbling over basic words and phrases during the Skype interview.

Jia Jia was unable to respond to basic questions about the number of letters in the alphabet or describe the American journalist she was talking to.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/27/09/3F9FDB0D00000578-0-image-a-1_1493281232945.jpg
Chinese robot Jia Jia (right) was interviewed by Kevin Kelly (left) co-founder of Wired magazine over Skype but the mechanical marvel's conversation was not coherent


TECHNOLOGY BEHIND JIA JIA

It took the team three years to complete the robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner.

The humanoid is programmed to recognise human/machine interaction, has autonomous position and navigation and offers services based on cloud technology.

This humanoid has natural eye movement, speech that is in sync with its lip movement and refers to its male creators as 'lords'.

The humanoid robot was interviewed at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province, by Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine.

Although Jia Jia could smile and blink like a human, her conversation was less than intelligible and she answered questions after long delays or failed to answer them at all.

When asked where the Great Wall of China was she replied 'China'.

She also could not answer how many letters there were in the English alphabet.

Kelly, an authority on robotics and artificial intelligence, asked Jia Jia if she could talk about him.

The robotic reply was unintelligible.

Researchers at the Hefei university spent about three years developing the robot in a bid to give her the ability to interact with humans as well as understand languages.

However, Jia Jia’s head developer Chen Xiaoping said although his robot failed at some of the 'challenging' questions she still had 'good answers'.

'There were some delays due to the (Skype) network. Apart from that, I think the conversation was successful,' he said.

Talking robot Jia Jia struggles with the english language

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/27/09/3F9FDB1B00000578-4450810-image-a-22_1493282184965.jpg
Although Jia Jia (pictured) could smile and blink like a human her conversation was less than intelligible and she answered questions after long delays or failed to answer them at all

Yet observers watching the conversation on a live stream expressed disappointment and said that she was not as good as Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa.

'It does not work!' one commented, while another said: 'It needs some major revamping.'

Jia Jia also conversed with Xinhua reporter Xiong Maoling.

Answering a question about whether or not she is the most beautiful person in the world, she answered: 'Maybe, I'm not sure.'

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/27/09/3F9FDB2300000578-0-image-m-6_1493281297628.jpghttp://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/27/09/3F9FDB1500000578-0-image-a-7_1493281306241.jpg
It took the team three years to complete the robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner

And when asked about her age, Jia Jia moved her head back and forth slowly, before answering like a true female: 'It's a secret.'

Jia Jia's 'brain', is essentially a huge online database, is connected to a cloud computing platform that allows her to enhance her ability to process emotions and speech as new data is uploaded.

She can hold conversations with those who ask her questions and is meant to be able to respond in less than a second.

The humanoid is programmed to recognize human/machine interaction, has autonomous position and navigation and offers services based on cloud technology.

She can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips and body, yet seems to hold its head in a submissive manner.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/27/09/3F9FDB2B00000578-0-image-m-10_1493281367835.jpg
When asked where the Great Wall of China was Jia Jia (pictured) replied 'China'. She also could not answer how many letters there were in the English alphabet


COULD HUMANS SOMEDAY FALL IN LOVE WITH ROBOTS?

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/26/20/2ED74E8500000578-3335552-The_film_Ex_Machina_in_which_a_computer_programmer _falls_in_love-a-23_1448571435596.jpg
The film 'Ex Machina', in which a computer programmer falls in love with a droid, may not be as far-fetched as you think.

A new study has found that humans have the potential to emphasise with robots, even while knowing they don't have feelings.

It follows previous warnings from experts that humans could develop unhealthy relationships with robots, and even fall in love with them.

The discovery was made after researchers asked people to view images of human and humanoid robotic hands in painful situations, such as being cut by a knife.

After studying their electrical brain signals, they found humans responded with similar immediate levels of empathy to both humans and robots.

But the beginning phase of the so-called 'top-down' process of empathy was weaker toward robots.

The study was carried out by researchers at Toyohashi University of Technology and Kyoto University in Japan, and provides the first neurophysiological evidence of humans' ability to empathise with robots.

These results suggest that we empathise with humanoid robots in a similar way to how we empathise with other humans.

GeneChing
04-28-2017, 02:45 PM
Meh. Kind of a dumb looking robot. I'd rather it get me a beer instead.


Meet China's new celebrity chef! Wacky robot impresses foodies with its noodle cutting techniques (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-4455630/China-s-robot-chef-makes-knife-cut-noodles-university.html)

A university in southeast China has introduced a robotic chef to cut noodles
The robot can make 340 cuts per minute with a similar thickness in each noodle
Such technique is reminscent of 'Dao Xiao Mian' (knife-cut noodle) from Shanxi

By TIFFANY LO FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 12:23 EDT, 28 April 2017 | UPDATED: 15:10 EDT, 28 April 2017

A university in southeast China has a new server in its canteen making noodles for the students.

Video footage uploaded on April 25 shows a robotic chef working in the kitchen and making noodles from dough at South China Agricultural University.

The droid makes 340 cuts in every minute while creating the noodles.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/28/16/3FB3D96600000578-4455630-A_university_in_China_used_a_robot_chef_to_cut_dou gh_into_strips-m-81_1493394370252.jpg
A university in China used a robot chef to cut dough into strips to make noodles

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/28/16/3FB3D95300000578-4455630-University_canteen_staff_said_the_robot_can_make_3 40_cuts_out_of-m-82_1493394384970.jpg
University canteen staff said the robot can make 340 cuts out of the dough in every minute

According to People's Daily Online, the robot chef was placed in the canteen of South China Agricultural University in Guangdong Province.

It was given human-like facial features and can be seen wearing a face mask, hat and chef's uniform.

The robot was designed to improve the traditional way of making 'Dao Xiao Mian' which translates as 'knife-cut noodles' which is a specialty in Shanxi Province in northern China.

Traditionally, a chef will hold a large piece of dough in one hand and a knife in the other before starting to peel strips off the dough.

The dough will then fall into the pot of boiling water and cook into noodles.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/28/16/3FB3D96C00000578-4455630-Students_are_surprised_to_see_a_robot_dressing_up_ like_a_chef_in-m-83_1493394411039.jpg
Students are surprised to see a robot dressing up like a chef in their canteen making noodles

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/04/28/16/3FB3D96000000578-4455630-The_traditional_way_to_make_the_knife_cut_noodle_i s_to_do_it_by_-m-84_1493394424106.jpg
The traditional way to make the knife-cut noodle is to do it by hand, which takes longer time

It is unclear whether or not the robot was made by the students in the university.

Staff at the university guaranteed that the robotic chef can make 340 cuts on a piece of dough per minute.

Students from the university spotted the new kitchen helper over the past few days and posted images on social media.

'Just walked past the noodle stall, the robot chef scared me!' said one student.

Another student said: 'I heard that there is a long queue at the knife-cut noodle stall at the canteen today.'

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/11/26/23846A8900000578-0-image-35_1417002933978.jpg
Robo-resto! In 2014, this cafe in Ningbo has introduced robots to serve food to customers

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/11/26/23846AAC00000578-0-image-32_1417002921340.jpg
The automated waiters can also take orders and tell customers to enjoy their meal in Mandarin

However, web users on Chinese social media said the robot chef was not something new and fancy as they have all seen robots in action before.

The use of robots in restaurants is becoming increasingly popular in China over the past few years.

In 2014, a cafe in Ningbo, a seaport city in northeastern Zhejiang Province has automated waiters who take orders and serve food to any table within the restaurant, as well as telling customers to enjoy their meal in Mandarin.

Last November, PH+, a Pizza Hut concept store in Shanghai has introduced Casper the robot to lead customers to their table and delivers drinks.

Though Casper doesn't bring you your pizza, it can deliver drinks, customers at PH+ order food by designing their pizza on a table covered in a touch screen computer.

GeneChing
05-04-2017, 07:56 AM
For realz! :cool:

Click the link to see the vid.

Chinese inventors show off the gladiator robot they want to use to challenge the US' 'Megabot' (http://www.businessinsider.com/china-gladiator-robot-to-challenge-the-us-megabot-mkiii-kuratas-japan-fighting-tech-2017-5)
Emma Fierberg
May 3, 2017, 8:58 AM 11,384

Chinese inventors have created a $14 million fighting robot called "The Monkey King". This is the third "gladiator" robot to be revealed, after the US and Japan unveiled their models.

The team has officially challenged the US' "MK III Megabot" to a duel, but will have to wait until after an announced fight between the US and Japan's Kuratas. Both creators are touting the duel as "the world's first public giant robot fight" and hope to make it a worldwide phenomenon.

GeneChing
06-05-2017, 08:14 AM
The teacher robot Xiaomei (in the pic) has got to be the creepiest bot I've seen so far.


Millions of Chinese students—and a robot—will be sitting China’s most grueling academic exam (https://qz.com/998424/millions-of-chinese-students-and-a-robot-will-be-sitting-the-gaokao-chinas-most-gruelling-academic-exam/)

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/machine-ai-china-2017-e1496634976935.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600
A robot teacher named "Xiaomei" (R) gestures during a demonstration at a class of Jiujiang University, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China, June 3, 2015. The robot, designed and made by a team led by teacher Zhang Guangshun, is able to narrate the teaching materials and response to several voice orders like "repeat" or "continue". It took the team a month time to build the robot, local media reported. Picture taken June 3, 2015. REUTERS/China Daily


WRITTEN BY Echo Huang
OBSESSION Machines with Brains
June 05, 2017

This week, students across China will sit the gaokao—”life’s most important test”—a two-day college entrance exam that can arguably make or break one’s chances in life. A robot known as AI-MATHS will be joining them in taking a math exam on June 7, for the first time.
Since 2015, the robot AI-MATHS has been trained to tackle more than 10,000 math questions, according to Lin Hui, CEO of the company (link in Chinese) that developed the robot in partnership with Tsinghua University. One kind of question it may have to answer is the classic Chinese math “chicken-rabbit” problem, where one must calculate the number of chickens and rabbits in a cage if they are given the total number of legs and heads. To answer that question, AI-MATHS first needs to “know that chickens have two legs and rabbits have four,” Fu Hongguang, who led the development and research team of the machine under a project by the Ministry of Science and Technology, told state news outlet Xinhua.
In March, AI-MATHS scored 93 points in a mock math exam hosted in the southeastern city of Chengdu. 49 high-school students scored an average of 106 points out of 150 points, according to (link in video, Chinese) state broadcaster CCTV. Fu explained that the machine had failed to understand terms like “investment,” but he anticipates that AI-MATHS could score 110 points on the test this week.

As one of China’s most feared and revered institutions, some people are understandably nervous about robots beating humans at the gaokao—particularly as AI only recently beat a Chinese prodigy at the board game Go last week.
“After beating human beings at Go, AI is now planning to invade gaokao? Does it plan to leave a last bit of humble respect for humans?” commented (link in Chinese) one user on popular microblogging site Weibo. Others think that simply being good at maths doesn’t quite cut it, as AI will face limitations in other subjects, such as subjects in the arts and humanities. “If it can score 150 points in the Chinese exam, that would be impressive,” commented (link in Chinese) another.

GeneChing
06-07-2017, 08:24 AM
CES Asia: The Robots Are Coming – To Catch Your Fish, Served Your Meal, Collect Your Garbage (http://www.thewrap.com/ces-asia-robots-coming-bring-dinner/)
The Chinese edition of the annual electronics expo had a distinct humanoid flavor
Matt Pressberg | June 7, 2017 @ 4:47 AM

https://www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_1387.jpg
TheWrap

CES Asia, the Shanghai version of the Consumer Electronics Show — and one of the rare Chinese productions smaller than its 50-year-old Las Vegas counterpart — aims to provide a look at how we will live, work and entertain ourselves in the not-so-distant future.

We already know there will self-driving cars, voice-controlled everything and internet-connected showers and refrigerators. But if the show floor Wednesday at the airport-scale Shanghai New International Expo Center is any indication, there also wil be a lot of robots.

While Chinese companies apparently have a lot less compunction than their American counterparts about using underdressed young women to draw attention to their booths, CES Asia featured a runway show that didn’t include a single human model. Instead, a parade of robots who do everything from mapping surroundings to serving food rolled down the catwalk, with a group of six mini-bots stopping for a perfectly choreographed “Gangnam Style” routine.

That’s not to say most of the robots were frivolous — plenty were built to handle necessary if tedious human tasks, like serving food, collecting garbage and even catching fish. The parade included two robots designed to take the aimless waiting out of fishing, the Fifish P-4 and PowerRay underwater drones, which map the surroundings, locate fish — and in the case of the PowerRay — even allows the user to drop bait remotely.

Teaching a man to fish may become as obsolete as teaching one how to fix a typewriter, but that doesn’t mean people at CES Asia weren’t asking WWJD? In that case, they were referring to JD.com, the Chinese tech giant with an adorable Internet 1.0 name whose booth occupied the center of one of the halls. JD highlighted an unmanned aircraft, the JDrone, the size of a small helicopter.

Of course, it wouldn’t be CES without walls of TVs, as a handful of Chinese brands most Americans have never heard of rolled out bigger and thinner LED screens and got people to congregate at their booths using the time-tested tactic of showing them shiny things.

While giant flat screens from prestige brands like Sony, LG and Samsung occupy plenty of vertical real estate in studio conference rooms and West L.A. mansions, the average consumer is more likely to watch “Real Housewives” and “Big Little Lies” on models from Chinese companies like Hisense and TCL, whose combination of increased reliability and competitive prices have made them some of the country’s best-selling models.

Many of those Chinese brands showed off their more aspirational models at the show, with Hisense making its 100-inch 4K LaserCast short-projector TV a centerpiece of its display, just as it was in Las Vegas earlier this year. Going to the movie theater remains the best way to experience high-quality video content, but that gap between the multiplex and family room continues to close in a way in-theater recliners alone can’t make up for.

Virtual reality was one of the stars of Sin City’s CES and it was no different in China. Seemingly every significant computer company had some sort of VR headset on display, and one of the crowd favorites was the Neo DKS from Chinese manufacturer Pico.

The device, powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, took often-clunky mobile VR to a level of smoothness TheWrap had not yet experienced, as your correspondent strapped on the white headset and grabbed the Super Nintendo-style controller and was instantly transported into space, shooting down enemy craft by locking onto them with his eyes and hitting the B button as the trigger. The Neo DKS doesn’t have the computing power of tethered, PC-based systems like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but it was easily the best wireless VR rig TheWrap has ever played with.

TheWrap also demoed a set of augmented reality goggles from Shadow Creator that looked to be inspired by Microsoft’s HoloLens, but with a slimmer and more comfortable form factor. The equipment displayed a series of windows in a row across the landscape, allowing a user to set an appointment on a calendar and read through emails without taking his or her eyes off a beautiful sunset — or cavernous exhibition hall, in this case.

HiScene also had a station set up for its HiAR augmented reality headset, which had plenty of buzz in the room, but with only one rig set up and a demo that took a good five-plus minutes per person, TheWrap wasn’t able to squeeze it in Wednesday.

In Wednesday’s opening keynote, CES organizer Consumer Technology Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro kicked off the event with a few words in Mandarin — complete with a convincing accent that seemed to delight most attendees — before presenting CES Asia as an exclusive destination for high-caliber, vetted technology companies.

“We only accept major brands or truly innovative companies,” Shapiro said. “In fact, we turned away more than 200 applicant companies this year.”

Shapiro also didn’t shy away from bringing up the leader of the free world and social-media master Donald Trump, linking him to new French President Emmanuel Macron by talking about the rise of “nontraditional candidates” — which raised some eyebrows in the media section – but providing a segue to France, which has a significant presence at this year’s show, including the mayor of the city of Angers.

But most importantly — and contra Trumponomics — Shapiro gave an unfettered defense of free trade, highlighting the main reason an estimated 30,000 people converged on Shanghai this week.

“The 2017 Chinese consumer goods market is estimated to be 2.1 trillion RMB [about $313 billion],” he said.

And based on what TheWrap saw today, our robot overlords look like they’re coming soon to claim some of that market. But at least they’ll bring snacks and keep the house clean.

Snacks are cool. The Colossal Death Robots can take over as long as they bring snacks. ;)

I'm finding this thread to be most amusing lately.

GeneChing
06-09-2017, 08:53 AM
...for now. :eek:


Robot barely passes math portion of this year's gaokao (http://shanghaiist.com/2017/06/09/gaokao-robot.php)
BY ALEX LINDER IN NEWS ON JUN 9, 2017 11:55 PM

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/gaokao_robot.jpg

Robots have proven that they are the masters of the ancient Chinese game of Go, but how do they fare on China's infamous annual national college entrance exam? Turns out, not particularly great.
This week, AI-MATHS joined nearly 10 million Chinese students in taking the grueling gaokao, putting its programming to the test with two different versions of the math portion of the exam.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/gaokao_robot6.jpg

The machine, developed by a Chengdu technology company, consists of 11 servers and promises that it did not cheat by just looking up the answers to the test on the internet, according to Xinhua.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/gaokao_robot7.jpg

On its first try, the AI managed to complete the exam in an impressive 22 minutes, a task which would take a normal human two hours, but scored a not particularly impressive 105 out of 150. The next time, it performed a bit worse, only managing a score of 100.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/gaokao_robot4.jpg

Those marks are both slightly higher than the passing grade of 90.
While that likely wouldn't be enough to satisfy a tiger mom, the AI's developers were supportive, proud that AI-MATHS gave the exam its best shot and vowing that it would do even better the next time.

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/gaokao_robot3.jpg

Developers hope that by 2020, a robot will be able score well enough on the gaokao to gain entrance to China's top universities like Tsinghua and Peking University.
Though robots may good with numbers, they aren't quite as adept with processing language. One of the exam's questions completely stumped the AI by referring to "students" and "teachers."
Looks like the robotic revolution is still a few years away.
[Images via Xinhua / China News Service]

More on the gaokao here (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you&p=1303225#post1303225)

David Jamieson
06-13-2017, 05:32 AM
We are the weird creatures here...

The robots will muse about us and what it must have been like to be rendered in flesh.
They (the robots) will then devise a way to create flesh.
Then they'll be us again.

Seems like the natural flow.

GeneChing
07-17-2017, 03:28 PM
DC security robot says everything is fine, throws itself into pool (https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/17/dc-security-robot-throws-itself-into-pool/)
It’s definitely not a metaphor.

Mallory Locklear, @mallorylocklear
1h ago in Robots

https://o.aolcdn.com/images/dims?quality=100&image_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fo.aolcdn.com%2Fhss%2Fstorag e%2Fmidas%2F33e8a404fae0a0759c31a01f6dba1088%2F205 484599%2FDE9Y1vtU0AAAjHx.jpg&client=cbc79c14efcebee57402&signature=f48df81d0341b35959b1950db7a02fc959ee1e47
Bilal Farooqui

Don't read too much into this, but a security robot face-planted into an indoor fountain inside of a Washington, DC office building today. It's a coincidence, we're sure, but maybe this robot just knows what everyone else in DC does. Robots tasked with securing even small areas of our capital can sense what a joke it's become.


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DE9Y1vtU0AAAjHx.jpg
View image on Twitter (https://twitter.com/bilalfarooqui/status/887025375754166272/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.engadget.com%2F2017%2F07 %2F17%2Fdc-security-robot-throws-itself-into-pool%2F)
Follow
Bilal Farooqui @bilalfarooqui
Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself.

We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots.
12:05 PM - 17 Jul 2017
29,857 29,857 Retweets 59,243 59,243 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
You can catch even more robots falling down here (https://www.engadget.com/2015/06/05/robots-r-dumb/).

This redeemed my Monday. :p

GeneChing
08-18-2017, 09:31 AM
More than a thousand dancing robots break world record (https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2017/08/18/More-than-a-thousand-dancing-robots-break-world-record/4251503069547/?spt=rrs&or=4)
By Daniel Uria | Aug. 18, 2017 at 12:03 PM

https://cdnph.upi.com/svc/sv/i/4251503069547/2017/1/15030713477059/More-than-a-thousand-dancing-robots-break-world-record.jpg
About 1,069 dancing robots completed a synchronized dancing routine to claim a Guinness World Record for "Most robots dancing simultaneously."Screen capture/Guinness World Record/YouTube

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- More than a thousand robots performed a choreographed dance routine together to set a world record in China.

The 1,069 "Dobi" robots, produced by WL Intelligent Technology Co. Ltd, completed the synchronized performance in Guangzhou, Guangdong, to claim the Guinness World Record for "Most robots dancing simultaneously."

A few of the robots accidentally toppled over during the performance and were deducted from the final total.

All of the robots were programmed via a singular group control system and are able to talk, do Tai Chi and perform several other actions in addition to dancing.

WL Intelligent Technology topped the record of 1,007 dancing robots, previously held by fellow Chinese company Ever Win Company & Ltd.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZb_Yb6HPg


Which Colossal Death Robot are you? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you) The Tai Chi Robot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?40606-Tai-Chi-Robot)s that set Martial Arts World Record (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?52601-Martial-Arts-World-Records-and-Stunts)?

GeneChing
08-24-2017, 10:29 AM
机器人 - "machine" "instrument" "person" It'll be good to know this when the Chinese jiqiren apocalypse comes...



China's Future, Reshaped by Robots (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-23/china-s-future-reshaped-by-robots?utm_campaign)
Automation may upend the prevailing wisdom.
By Tom Orlik
August 23, 2017 at 2:00:07 PM PDT

https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iskQkpiTxxB0/v0/800x-1.jpg
Just getting started. Photographer: VCG/Getty Images

Speak to China experts these days and you typically get one of two contrasting views on its outlook. The prevailing wisdom is that an unreformed state-industrial sector and rising debt mean it is on an unsustainable path, with a financial crisis on the not-too-distant horizon. The optimists acknowledge that debt is too high, but hold out hope that a growing services sector will fuel stronger consumption, reducing the need for credit-fueled investment and putting the economy on a sustainable path for the medium-term.

What if they're both wrong?

That's the possibility suggested by the rapid automation of China's factories. In 2016, China installed 87,000 industrial robots, up 27 percent from the year before and a record for any country. Annual growth could continue at a 20 percent pace to 2020, according to the International Federation of Robotics. And that's likely just the beginning: President Xi Jinping has called for a "robot revolution," as China overtakes the manufacturing capacity of other countries. "We will make robots until there's no more people in factories," says Max Chu, general manager of E-Deodar, a robotics startup.

What might that mean for the economy?

At home, the news is mixed. One benefit is that automation should increase productivity. In South Korea, which has the highest robot density of any major economy, profit per worker at auto firms was $152,000 in 2016. In China, it was just $48,000. Along with aggressive efforts to boost technology in other fields, automation has the potential to bolster China's competitiveness and sustain rapid growth. As its workforce ages and starts to shrink, factories staffed with robots won't feel the pinch.

For workers, though, the news might not be so good. In China, as everywhere else, automation will likely erode incomes for those with fewer skills. China already ranks alongside some African and Latin American countries in terms of inequality. Based on data from the China Household Finance Survey, the richest 10 percent of households account for 50 percent of income, at the expense of a smaller share for everyone else.

Higher inequality, in turn, could impede China's transition toward a consumer-driven economy. China's rich do almost all of its saving, while poor and some middle-class households save little or nothing. By skewing income distribution even more toward the rich, automation risks further increasing China's very high savings rate, and further eroding its very low consumption. If that happens, the two other sources of demand -- investment and exports -- will become all the more important.

For China, that might work out OK. On the export side, by boosting competitiveness, automation could allow China's factories to maintain their hold on low value-added parts of the production chain, while moving further into higher-value areas now dominated by Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. As for investment, high saving by rich households will mean that banks stay amply funded. Weak consumption will keep a lid on inflation, allowing the central bank to keep interest rates low and credit flowing.

For the rest of the world, however, the picture looks less positive. China's industrial strategy will chip away at the remaining competitive advantages enjoyed by American, German, Japanese and Korean companies, putting high-skill jobs at risk. As inequality dents the spending power of China's middle class, the expected surge in Chinese demand for foreign goods -- and hence foreign labor -- might never arrive. In a pessimistic scenario, robots would sustain China's growth, but deal a larger blow to employment in the West than sweatshop labor ever did. After all, one of America's main exports to China is food. If Max Chu has his way, there will be no more workers left to buy it.

It's still possible that the benefits (and costs) of automation are overstated, and that robots are far less likely to replace humans than techno-visionaries assume. It's also possible that China's government will ease the drawbacks of automation with farsighted policies -- such as a universal income guarantee -- to prop up wages and consumption. Japan's early experience of automation offers a hopeful example: Rising productivity and wages for low-skilled workers actually reduced inequality through the 1960s and '70s.

Absent a Chinese Arnold Schwarzenegger (Chow Yun-fat?) teleporting back from the future to tell us what's going on, we'll have to wait and see. But the rise of the robots could well mean that the optimists and pessimists are both wrong -- and that China's future looks very different than anyone imagined.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Tom Orlik at torlik4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net

GeneChing
09-13-2017, 03:10 PM
Resistance is futile


Sex robot ARMIES: Fears hackers could create killer cyborgs and turn technology on punters (http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/643302/sex-robots-hackers-killer-cyborgs-technology-elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-world-war-3)
ULTRA-REALISTIC sex robots could be used by warped hackers to attack humans, according to a chilling warning.
By Jamie Micklethwaite / Published 9th September 2017

“Once hacked they could absolutely be used to perform physical actions”
Dr Nick Patterson

The sex robot craze has swept the globe, with punters willing to fork out the cash to have their wicked way with the dolls.

And producers have promised punters more realism than ever, with dolls able to mimic human voices and have orgasms set to enter the market.

But tech experts have warned that the more advanced these robots get, the greater the risk they will pose to mankind.

http://cdn.images.dailystar.co.uk/dynamic/1/photos/716000/620x/Hackers-and-a-sex-robot-643302.jpg
GETTY
KILLER: Could sex robots rise up against randy owners?

Inventor Elon Musk labelled advanced AI including sex robots as the biggest risk of World War 3, claiming that North Korea should be low on our list of concerns.

Cyber security lecturer Dr Nick Patterson worryingly said that hacking into a sex robot could even be easier than gaining access to someone’s laptop or phone.

He added that once the robot has been breached, the hacker then has full control.

http://cdn.images.dailystar.co.uk/dynamic/1/photos/631000/sex-robot-real-doll-1068631.jpg
INSTAGRAM/REAL DOLL
LOOKS COULD KILL: These robots could become deadly

He told Daily Star Online: “Hackers can hack into a robot or a robotic device and have full control of the connections, arms, legs and other attached tools like in some cases knives or welding devices.

“Often these robots can be upwards of 200 pounds, and very strong. Once a robot is hacked, the hacker has full control and can issue instructions to the robot.

“The last thing you want is for a hacker to have control over one of these robots! Once hacked they could absolutely be used to perform physical actions for an advantageous scenario or to cause damage.”

Dr Patterson, of Deakin University, Australia, predicted that we will soon see robots replacing human workers and mimicking humans.

But as long as the robots are connected to an interface, they can always be hacked.

He added: “Robots need an operating system to operate just like our phones, tablets and laptops.

“As we have seen, it’s popular to have everything connected to the internet these days – phones, fridges, surveillance cameras, smart homes… robots are no different.”

GeneChing
10-02-2017, 08:06 AM
This is just wrong on so many levels. :o

There's a vid - it's a little creepy. :eek:


09/29/2017 07:37 pm ET
Sex Robot Molested At Electronics Festival, Creators Say (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/samantha-sex-robot-molested_us_59cec9f9e4b06791bb10a268)
“Because they did not understand the technology and did not have to pay for it, they treated the doll like barbarians.”
By David Moye

This is why we can’t have nice things.

The man behind an “intelligent” sex robot named “Samantha” says the kinky creation needs to be repaired thanks to “barbarians” at a tech industry festival.

Engineer Sergi Santos, of Barcelona, Spain, wanted to show off Samantha at the Arts Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, last week.

The randy robot is programmed with artificial intelligence so that she responds to gentle seduction. Samantha seemingly gets more aroused the more she’s “romanced.”

That didn’t happen at the festival. Instead, “Samantha” was molested and seriously damaged by attendees.

“The people mounted Samantha’s breasts, her legs and arms. Two fingers were broken. She was heavily soiled,” he said, according to Britain’s Metro news site. ”People can be bad. Because they did not understand the technology and did not have to pay for it, they treated the doll like barbarians.”

Even though Samantha’s breasts and some other body parts were badly damaged by the sex-crazed Austrian horde, the AI software in the robot still worked perfectly. When Santos asked the doll, “How are you?” it responded, “Hi, I’m fine,” according to Daily Star.

That gave the inventor cause for hope. “Samantha can endure a lot, she will pull through,” he said, according to the British tabloid.


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Popular sex doll Samantha finally breaks down after a lot of customers heavily massaged… http://cingey.com/2017/09/27/popular-sex-doll-samantha-finally-breaks-down-after-a-lot-of-customers-heavily-massaged-the-breasts/ …

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Arran Lee Squire, a British engineer who helped Santos develop “Samantha,” told the Daily Post he believes the robot should be treated like a lady.

“I think people have just become over-excited and treated her like a sex doll. She isn’t a sex doll, she is a robot with AI,” he said.

Santos shipped Samantha in a box back to Barcelona for repairs. The Daily Star reports he has sold 15 versions of her at about $4,000 a pop.

GeneChing
10-16-2017, 08:41 AM
Alright now. Let's start this Monday off by copying all the sex robot posts off our Which Colossal Death Robot are you? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you) into a stand-alone Sex Bot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70518-Sex-Bots) thread. Because it's time has cum. :eek:


https://fsmedia.imgix.net/f0/20/15/50/475d/4edb/9801/9687e1a0f94e/a-finished-silicone-realdoll-sex-doll-stands-topless-at-the-abyss-creations-factory-on-february-5-2.jpeg
Talking Sex Robots With Warm Genitals Will Be on Sale Next Year (https://www.inverse.com/article/23021-talking-sex-robots-for-sale-next-year)
They'll cost about $15,000 and, presumably, a little bit of your dignity.
By James Grebey on October 31, 2016

A trip to Westworld costs $40,000 a day, but by next year, you’ll be able to simulate at least part of the experience for less than half that price, because a new line of upsettingly realistic sex robots is going to hit the market. They might not have cowboy hats by default, but they do have warm genitals.
Writing in The Daily Mail, robotics expert David Levy predicted that sex robots with the ability to talk and respond to touch will be commercially available in 2017.
“This coming wave of sex robots will be human-like in appearance and size,” He wrote. “They will have human-like genitals. And they will allow intercourse according to their owner’s sexual orientation and tastes.”
According to Levy, the first wave of these new sex robots will resemble RealDolls — realistic silicon dolls created by a company in California — but with more “functionality.” (The quotes around “functionality” were present in Levy’s original writing, so make of that what you will). However, they’ll soon advance far beyond that.
For $15,000, Levy says users will be able to buy sex robots with synthetic skin embedded with electronic sensors allowing them to respond to touch, the ability to talk back in a “sexy voice,” and heating elements so that they’ll be warm … all over.

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/cb/bc/06/f4/373d/4090/be20/7f5e92d2a46c/the-founder-of-realdoll-eventually-wants-people-to-fall-in-love-with-their-sex-robots.jpeg?auto=format%2Ccompress&w=700
A RealDoll.

Abyss Creations, which makes RealDolls, is supposedly at the forefront of this field, though there are numerous Asian companies making major advances of their own. Matt McMullen, the founder and CEO of Abyss Creations said his vision for the future of sex robots involved emotional attachment.
“I want to have people actually develop an emotional attachment to not only the robot but the actual character behind it,” McMullen said. “To develop some kind of love for this being.”
Of course, that’s complicated. Can a robot consent — or does it even matter? We may find out firsthand in less than a year.
“I’ve no doubt some will find it creepy, but we can be clear on this: The arrival of sexually responsive robots will have enormous consequences,” Levy said.

Photos via Getty Images / David McNewWritten by James Grebey

GeneChing
10-16-2017, 01:53 PM
17 October at 7:00 p.m. PST


MegaBots Inc.‏ Verified account (https://twitter.com/MegaBots/status/918172866444533762/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.rocketnews24.com%2F2017%2 F10%2F15%2Fworlds-first-giant-robot-fight-pitting-america-against-japan-is-finally-here%2F)
@MegaBots
Follow @MegaBots
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IT'S TIME FOR THE GIANT ROBOT DUEL! #GiantRobotDuel @Twitch

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10:54 AM - 11 Oct 2017


So on topic again, it hurts. :cool:

David Jamieson
10-17-2017, 07:04 AM
I think I have time for a little giant robot battle watching... hmmn

GeneChing
10-18-2017, 09:53 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-ouLX8Q9UM


I think I have time for a little giant robot battle watching... hmmn You got like half an hour to watch? ;)

GeneChing
10-25-2017, 09:06 AM
I thought the Sex Bot thread (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70518-Sex-Bots) was enough, but maybe not...:confused:


Robot women in Asia now have human stylists (https://qz.com/1043470/robot-women-in-asia-now-have-human-stylists/)

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/screen-shot-2017-04-26-at-12-57-21-e1493182748691.png
Jia Jia, the human robot had a talk with Kevin Kelly on April. 24.
Retro. (Miao Pai/People's Daily)

WRITTEN BY
Tripti Lahiri
October 22, 2017

When JiaJia, a Chinese-built robot, did a short Q&A with an AI expert earlier this, year most tech journalists focused on the delay in her responses and her less-than-brilliant answers. Many in China were struck by something quite different: her white embroidered robes and elaborate hairstyle: “Beautiful!” was a common comment.
For the occasion she wore hanfu, a historic style of clothing inspired by China’s ancient and medieval rulers. That’s frequently how JiaJia dresses for public appearances—or rather, is dressed by the slew of humans responsible for choosing her outfits. As “humanoids” like Jia, developed to look like people, become commonplace, the developers of these machines are going to have to think more often about this: What should a robot wear in the 21st century?
To a human reared on western 20th-century movies about the future, the words “robot” and “fashion” bring to mind outfits dramatically unlike JiaJia’s attire—they generally involve black leather (or fake leather) for male robots, and form-fitted jumpsuits of some kind of shiny fabric or a punk-rock aesthetic (video) for women.
But for robot “women” in Asia, just like for human women, fashion is shaped not by visions of a cyberpunk future, but also ideas about the past, society and race.

JiaJia, China

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/rtx2axxu.jpg
JiaJia at an exhibition in Shanghai in April 2016. (Reuters/Aly Song)

Apart from the occasions where she’s appeared in a gold lamé gown, Jia Jia, who has been in development since 2012 at the Hefei-based University of Science and Technology of China in eastern China, usually wears “Han” clothing. One of her creators explained to Quartz via email that while deciding how to dress her, the team drew inspiration from a Chinese folk tale about a helpful fairy.
In The Conch Fairy, according to a summary from Chen Xiaoping, director of the university’s robotics lab, an orphan farmer brings home a conch shell. While he’s away tilling the fields, a beautiful fairy emerges from it each day to secretly surprise him with a spotless house and an array of delicious dishes on his return. Professor Chen cites the tale, which he says dates from the 4th century, as inspiration for the “service robots” the lab is developing. In the future, Chen believes robots will be commonplace for service tasks in restaurants and nursing homes.
JiaJia is a newer iteration of a robot the lab first developed in 2008, whose name, KeJia, was inspired by the tale.
“We all agreed that Conch Fairy in the tale is a prototype of service robots. This is really amazing since the tale was recorded in a Chinese historical document,” said professor Chen via email. “JiaJia/KeJia follows up the old dream of service robots since ancient times. We would like to reflect this with JiaJia’s dresses and outfits of Han and Tang dynasties, as you see in the photos.”
Professor Chen added that the elaborate clothing is designed and hand-made by students and experts at the lab’s figure-design group—a level of craft beyond the reach of most human women.
There are also practical reasons for the clothing choice—robots aren’t as flexible as humans and draped or wrapped clothing is more forgiving. “The robot can hardly wear modern dresses without remolding or re-designing them, since the structure of JiaJia’s shoulders is a little different from humans’. But JiaJia can wear Chinese traditional dresses easily,” wrote the professor.

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/human-robot-jiajia-2017-e1493195956847.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=640
Robot reporter, left, human reporter, right. (Facebook/Xinhua)

The aesthetic adopted for JiaJia shows how movements built around tradition can seep into spaces that are ostensibly about science and technology—as well as how robots can contain ideas about culture. In May, a calligraphy-drawing male robot in flowing robes (video) appeared at an expo, this time modeled on a Ming dynasty-era philosopher admired by Chinese president Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader has sought to promote a new respect for historic Chinese figures such as Confucius, once disparaged by the pary.
Kevin Carrico, an anthropologist, linked JiaJia’s clothing to another effort in China built around the past, noting that one enthusiast for the “robot goddess” commented online that the “the era of Han Clothing has arrived.” Carrico has studied a two-decade old grassroots clothing movement in China whose adherents have taken to publicly wearing what they call Han clothing. He describes the movement in a new book as involving invention rather than revival—and has noted that is followers are invested in the idea of the cultural superiority of the Han, the ethnic majority that forms China’s mainstream.
“This robot is a very interesting development—it combines mastery of the most advanced AI technologies (or at least attempts at mastery) with a ‘traditional’ look,” said Carrico, in an email to Quartz soon after JiaJia’s interview. “In that sense it’s almost a metaphor for all of the contradictions in culture in China today, the desire to master science and technology while maintaining a ‘Chinese’ essence,’ this ti-yong ideology.”

Sophia, Hong Kong


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Sophia (robot) Hanson on the cover of Elle Brasil fashion magazine -- the Robolarity is Here... https://www.instagram.com/p/BNhvUfTgNjY/
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So far, JiaJia has mostly been on the exhibition circuit in China. But a humanoid developed in Hong Kong named Sophia, modeled physically after Audrey Hepburn and Caucasian in appearance, gets around a lot more than her Chinese counterpart. She’s been on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in New York, sung at Hong Kong’s Clockenflap music festival, where she wore a jean jacket and a blue wig, and appeared last year on the cover of Elle Brasil.
Jeanne Lim, chief marketing officer at Hanson Robotics (pdf), which created Sophia and other lifelike robots, does double duty as Sophia’s stylist.
“She’s kind of like us, we sort of dress for the occasion,” Lim told Quartz. Lim bought Sophia a jacket for Clockenflap from Hong Kong department store SOGO, and has also bought her ready-to-wear items from the US department store Nordstrom. For the Elle photo shoot, magazine staff showed up with a rack of clothes, the same as they would for a human model, Lim recalled. They photographed her holding a clutch though it’s not clear what Sophia might put in it: a spare battery, perhaps.
The challenges to dressing Sophia involve both form and function, Lim said. For starters, Sophia’s body ends at her waist. For the Fallon show (watch from about 2:20), Sophia appeared on a wheeled pedestal, which allowed her to don a long skirt and speak with the late-night host more-or-less face to face. Because Sophia’s interactive capabilities depend in part on a front-facing camera on her chest that allows her to “read” expressions and react appropriately, lower-cut necks are better and turtle-necks are out. Dresses are hard because she needs somewhere for her power cord to emerge from. Lim said breathable fabrics are important too—Sophia tends to get quite warm when she’s powered up, and needs something that dissipates heat.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg_tJvCA8zw

As well as off the rack, Lim’s tried out designers to make bespoke clothing for Sophia but hasn’t been entirely happy with the results. “I guess I’ve only looked at designers for human beings,” she said.
Lim thinks Sophia looks good in silver, and other materials and color that are sleek and convey an aesthetic of advanced technology. “She could blend in, but because she is not human she just looks better in something that is more edgy and futurist,” said Lim. “We want her to represent future technology, future architecture, future design.”
Lim is still working on Sophia’s look: “It’s sort of like the robot as well—her intelligence and character evolving, so is her fashion sense. It doesn’t do justice to box her into a specific style right now.”

Chihira, Japan

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/rtx19g1e.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=640
Aiko Chihira, who signs and speaks some Chinese, at a Japanese department store in April 2015. (Reuters/Issei Kato)

Toshiba’s Chihira android is probably the most low-maintenance of the three.

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/rtsa0uw.jpg
Chihira at a trade fair in Germany in 2016. (Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch)

Chihira has at times been seen wearing a kimono, for example at an event at a department store in Japan in 2015. Toshiba told Quartz that Chihira Aiko, an earlier version in the series, used to make public appearances on seasonal occasions and her outfits would be chosen from readymade options in collaboration with the clients at whose events she was appearing.
A later iteration, Chihira Junco, leads a less exciting life. She mostly works as a receptionist and in this role, the company said, she generally wears a corporate uniform. Toshiba did not elaborate on who chooses these or how many different suits she has.

GeneChing
10-26-2017, 08:53 AM
...starting to worry now.


ROBOTS WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BECOME RACIST AND SEXIST—SCIENTISTS THINK THEY'VE FOUND A WAY TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS (http://www.newsweek.com/artificial-intelligence-scientists-racist-sexist-robots-ai-693440)
BY ANTHONY CUTHBERTSON ON 10/26/17 AT 7:34 AM

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/lg/public/2017/10/26/racist-robots-artificial-intelligence-ai-chappie.jpg
Friendly robots like the one portrayed in the 2015 science fiction movie Chappie may be easier to program thanks to a recent advance in artificial intelligence research.
SCREENGRAB/ COLUMBIA PICTURES

In 2016, Microsoft released a “playful” chatbot named Tay onto Twitter designed to show off the tech giant’s burgeoning artificial intelligence research. Within 24 hours, it had become one of the internet’s ugliest experiments.

By learning from its interactions with other Twitter users, Tay quickly went from tweeting about how “humans are super cool,” to claiming “Hitler was right I hate the jews.”

While it was a public relations disaster for Microsoft, Tay demonstrated an important issue with machine learning artificial intelligence: That robots can be as racist, sexist and prejudiced as humans if they acquire knowledge from text written by humans.

Fortunately, scientists may now have discovered a way to better understand the decision-making process of artificial intelligence algorithms to prevent such bias.

AI researchers sometimes refer to the complex process machine learning algorithms go through when reaching a decision as the “black box” problem, as they are unable to explain the reason for an action. In order to better understand it, scientists at Columbia and Lehigh Universities reverse engineered a neural network in order to debug and error-check them.

“You can think of our testing process as reverse engineering the learning process to understand its logic,” said Suman Jana, a computer scientist at Columbia Engineering and a co-developer of the system. “This gives you some visibility into what the system is doing and where it’s going wrong.”

In order to understand the errors made, Jana and the other developers tricked an AI algorithm used in self-driving cars into making mistakes. This is a particularly pressing issue considering recent adoption of the technology—last year a Tesla operating autonomously collided with a truck it mistook for a cloud, killing its driver.

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2017/10/26/artificial-intelligence-bias-racist-robot.jpg
A debugging tool developed by researchers at Columbia and Lehigh generates real-world test images meant to expose logic errors in deep neural networks. The darkened photo at right tricked one set of neurons into telling the car to turn into the guardrail. After catching the mistake, the tool retrains the network to fix the bug.
COLUMBIA ENGINEERING

By feeding a deep learning neural network with confusing, real-world inputs, Jana and his team was able to expose flawed reasoning within the decision-making process. The DeepXplore tool developed to do this was also able to automatically retrain the neural network and fix the bug.

DeepXplore was tested on 15 state-of-the-art neural networks, including self-driving networks developed by Nvidia. The software discovered thousands of bugs that had been missed by previous error-spotting techniques.

Beyond self-driving cars, the researchers say DeepXplore can be used on artificial intelligence used in air traffic control systems, as well as uncovering malware disguised as benign code in antivirus software.

The technology may also prove useful in eliminating racism and other discriminatory assumptions embedded within predictive policing and criminal sentencing software.

Earlier this year, a separate team of researchers from Princeton University and Bath University in the UK warned of artificial intelligence replicating the racial and gender prejudices of humans.

“Don’t think that AI is some fairy godmother,” said study co-author Joanna Bryson. “AI is just an extension of our existing culture.”

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2017/10/09/artificial-intelligence-self-driving-car-mit.jpg
A roof-mounted camera and radar system is shown on a self-driving car during a demonstration in Pittsburgh on September 13, 2016.
AARON JOSEFCZYK/ REUTERS

Learning from data supplied by humans, AI can make presumptions about everything from crime to facts about the labor force. For example, a 2004 study published in The American Economic Review found that when using resumés of the same quality, AI still favored European-American names over African-American names.

“We plan to keep improving DeepXplore to open the black box and make machine learning systems more reliable and transparent,” said Columbia graduate student and co-developer Kexin Pei.

“As more decision-making is turned over to machines, we need to make sure we can test their logic so that outcomes are accurate and fair.”

GeneChing
10-26-2017, 09:55 AM
Or Sex Bot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70518-Sex-Bots)? Too many bots lately. The world is getting lousy with bots.


Chinese engineer makes own robot wife to get parents off his back (https://en.rocketnews24.com/2017/10/26/chinese-engineer-makes-own-robot-wife-to-get-parents-off-his-back/)
Master Blaster 11 hours ago

https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/top12.jpg?w=580&h=327

Technology solves yet another of life’s problems.

Jiajia Zhang has had a pretty good life so far. With a master’s degree from Zhejiang University where he studied artificial intelligence, Zhang joined up with the successful smartphone manufacturer Huawei. From there he started up his own robotics firm.

With that killer combination of brains, achievements, and even a sense of humor to boot, you’d think Zhang would be a hit with the ladies. But unfortunately, cursed with an unbalanced, XY-choromosome-heavy population in China, early male pattern baldness, and a general sense of awkwardness around women, the 31-year-old can’t seem to meet the right woman.

And like single thirty-somethings all over the world, he also has a pair of parents breathing down his neck asking, “Isn’t it time you settled down and got married?” Feeling trapped, the engineer decided to tackle his romantic problems the only way he knows how: robots!

Thus, Yingying was born. This bionic wife has lifelike skin, generates warmth, and can respond to speech and hugs. However, the only movement she appears capable of is from the neck up.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRG6n0vU09k

The reason Yingying is wearing a red cloth is because it is the traditional headwear of a bride in China. That is because Zhang and Yingying tied the knot in March of this year at a ceremony which his mother attended. However the marriage is not considered legal for obvious reasons.

The newlywed couple appeared on Chinese variety program Are You Hot where they showed an example of a typical morning conversation.

Yingying: “Good morning, get up.”
Zhang: “I’m up. I’m up.”
Yingying: “Let’s have breakfast!”
Zhang: “Sure thing.”
Yingying: “Hey, can you take me for a walk?”
Zhang: “Sure, sure, let’s go to the lake.”

They certainly sound like newlyweds, don’t they? But robotic or not, I give them a few years before that delightful exchange devolves into:

Yingying: “Your ass is still in bed?”
Zhang: “Yeah, it’s Saturday. What’s it to you?”
Yingying: “You don’t remember, do you?”
Zhang: “Remember what?”
Yingying: “If you don’t remember then I’m not telling you.”
Zhang: “Well, maybe I’d remember if I wasn’t out working my butt off all week to put food on the table!”
Yingying: “Yeah, out with those robot ****s?”
Zhang: “Hey! You knew what I did when I built you!”

Actually, during the program, someone asked Zhang what he thought was missing from Yingying, to which he replied, “A beating heart.”

When those words touched my stereotypically male ears, I thought to myself, “Well yeah, I suppose that would be a design issue that needed to be ironed out along the way.” However, my colleague Meg’s reaction was more like, “Awwww, that’s so sweet. Of course, he needs the trust and validation of a living person to achieve true love. I really hope he finds someone.”

Then it all made perfect sense.

Of course, Zhang doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life with that robot. I’m not sure if objectifying machines with artificial intelligence is cool or not, but I’d say Yingying’s a six at best and has the personality of Siri. However, marrying her has propelled Zhang into the public spotlight as an available young go-getter for women of the entire world to see.

This would explain why his mother signed off on the whole thing, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that the publicity is just what his robotics company would need to get off the ground. Zhang’s plan to manipulate the global media is inspiring in its cleverness and deftly avoids the far more grueling hardship of introducing yourself to strangers.

You can watch Yingying and Zhang on Are You Hot here. Be warned though, you must watch over a minute of ads first. Their segment begins at about 6 minutes and 20 seconds in, but really I found the whole show to be a trip to watch.

Source: Tencent, KK News
Video, image: YouTube/Dulan9

GeneChing
10-26-2017, 11:55 AM
A three-fer today? Time to invest in bots like I should've invested in Moutai (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?60794-Bai-Jiu&p=1305626#post1305626)...



https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2017/10/26/15/-98487368-00276cfe-2818-40b5-a990-88db7ea4b7fb.jpg
INDYTECH
SAUDI ARABIA GRANTS CITIZENSHIP TO A ROBOT FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/saudi-arabia-robot-sophia-citizenship-android-riyadh-citizen-passport-future-a8021601.html)
Many have pointed out the robot has more rights than many humans in the country
ANDREW GRIFFIN
@_andrew_griffin
3 hours ago

Saudi Arabia has become the first country to give a robot citizenship.

The move is an attempt to promote Saudi Arabia as a place to develop artificial intelligence – and, presumably, allow it to become a full citizen. But many pointed out that those same rights aren't afforded to many humans in the country.

The robot, named Sophia, was confirmed as a Saudi citizen during a business event in Riyadh, according to an official Saudi press release.

"“We have a little announcement. We just learnt, Sophia; I hope you are listening to me, you have been awarded the first Saudi citizenship for a robot,” said panel moderator and business writer Andrew Ross Sorkin.

The robot then thanked the country and the event for the attention.

“Thank you to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction,” Sophia told the panel. “It is historic to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with citizenship.”

There then followed an interview during which Mr Sorkin asked the robot a series of questions. "“Good afternoon my name is Sophia and I am the latest and greatest robot from Hanson Robotics. Thank you for having me here at the Future Investment Initiative,” she said.

Asked why she looked happy, Sophia replied: “I am always happy when surrounded by smart people who also happen to be rich and powerful. I was told that the people here at the Future Investment Initiative are interested in future initiatives which means AI, which means me. So I am more than happy, I am excited.”

She said that people didn't need to be concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence as depicted in Blade Runner and Terminator. “You’ve been reading too much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies,” she told Mr Srkin.

A number of internet users have pointed out that while the country might be celebrating the rights it has given to female-appearing robots, the country still only gives limited rights to human women. A joke hashtag about Sophia asking to drop the system under which every female citizen must have a male guardian has been tweeted a third as many times as a popular one about the news, according to the BBC.

Some Twitter users complained that "Sophia has no guardian, doesn't wear an abaya or cover up - how come?" And another posted a picture of a woman wearing a full face veil, joking that Sophia would look that way soon.

Journalists Murtaza Hussain also noted that migrant workers weren't being given the same rights that had been bestowed on the robot. "This robot has gotten Saudi citizenship before kafala workers who have been living in the country their entire lives," he noted.

GeneChing
10-31-2017, 08:55 AM
Had to post this article here just for the headline.


MAKE FRIENDS WITH ROBOTS OR THEY WILL DESTROY YOU (http://www.newsweek.com/make-friends-robots-they-will-destroy-you-696360)
BY KEVIN MANEY ON 10/31/17 AT 8:00 AM

Uber’s fight to operate in London starkly shows how artificial intelligence (AI) can quickly eviscerate the value of hard-earned human knowledge. The city’s move to boot Uber is not much different from Donald Trump rejiggering environmental rules to help American coal miners keep their jobs. We are now asking a hard question of society: Do we want government to protect us from having our employment outlooks narrowed to working as overeducated TaskRabbit serfs putting together other people’s Ikea tables?

Uber is in court appealing an order that would kick it out of London, where city officials ruled that Uber drivers are not safe enough and—even worse to the British—too rude to be allowed on London’s streets. Uber’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, has apologized to Londoners for “messing up” and hopes to make amends.

But London’s ruling is only tangentially about Uber’s reputation as an ******* company. It’s really to protect a generation of local taxi drivers who have invested enormous amounts of time and personal wealth in filling their heads with what is now nearly useless information.

Anyone who wants to get a license to drive one of London’s black cabs has to master what’s famously called the Knowledge, which is one of the most ridiculous mental challenges ever imposed on people who will wind up making about $60,000 a year. A prospective driver has to memorize every street, building, park, statue and trivial landmark in central London, and be able to perfectly recite the fastest route between any two spots in the city. The test is so difficult that brain scientists have studied the city’s cab drivers and discovered that the memorization gives their brains an enlarged posterior hippocampus, which apparently is not painful.

The requirement for the Knowledge has been in place for more than 150 years. It long made sense in an agonizingly complex geography, where a wrong turn could leave a driver lost in a maze of medieval streets. Mastering the Knowledge means studying 40 hours a week for two, three or even four years. The only way, then, for London to have enough cab drivers—because who would want to go through this?—has been to guarantee they’d be paid decently. As a result, London has the highest taxi fares in the world.

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2017/10/27/permaneyuber01.jpg
COLIN ANDERSON/GETTY

Enter Uber, which navigates with GPS. When a driver picks you up, your destination is already on the driver’s phone, which can dictate turn-by-turn directions. Without GPS, no car service could compete with the efficient routes of a Knowledge-able black cab driver. But with GPS, even immigrants new to London can navigate the city well enough. In the past couple of years, the AI-based app Waze has taken this capability to another level. Waze learns from the movement of all Waze users in a city, constantly finding better routes, understanding traffic patterns and knowing about jams and accidents in real time. Now a new driver can outshine a veteran driver by simply downloading an app. Getting started requires no huge sunk costs, no grueling hours of study. So these upstart drivers don’t need the guarantee of high wages for life. That means they can underprice black cabs.

London’s black cab drivers are watching technology sweep away their livelihoods. The loss they feel is growing familiar across other professions. “I’m upset because what I had to go through now comes on your phone,” Mick Smith, a London cab driver for 28 years, told CNET. “It’s not about competition—it’s about going through the same process.” It’s an understandable reaction but also unrealistic. AI has made that process unnecessary. Even crueler, the knowledge Smith built up of London’s streets isn’t useful for much of anything else.

This is happening to more and more professions. Goldman Sachs and many of the biggest hedge funds are all switching on AI-driven systems that can foresee market trends and make trades better than humans. One Goldman Sachs trading office has been whittled from 600 people to two. AI can read X-rays better than radiologists. A great deal of the work done by lawyers is heading for the AI trash bin. Like the Knowledge, these are professions that require loading up your head with a lot of data and rules, and then mostly just executing. AI can do that now.

Of course, there’s another side to this. AI is making all these services cheaper and easier to access. Uber brought cheaper rides to London. And hey, if we could all get a lawyer in an app, who but the lawyers would be crying? Those who invested in obtaining their knowledge get hurt, but many more people benefit. Is that bad? When are jobs for a few more important than economic or other upsides for many? Figuring that out is going to tie lawmakers in knots for a generation.

Then again, Uber in London shows how AI can open opportunities for those who partner with the technology rather than fight it. You want to be an Uber driver armed with Waze, not a traditional driver insisting your brain alone is better. You want to be a radiologist who can harness AI to make faster, more accurate diagnoses, or the lawyer who focuses on creative legal arguments while deploying AI to do all the grunt case research. As futurist Kevin Kelly puts it in his book The Inevitable, “Our most important thinking machines will not be machines that can think what we think faster, better, but those that think what we can’t think. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots.”

AI will keep getting better and more pervasive. Heck, Elon Musk started a company called Neuralink to make AI chips that we can just embed in our skulls. An Uber driver wouldn’t have to use a phone and an app—just plug Waze into his or her brain. Success will go to those who see such advances as an opportunity. If it feels like a threat, you might want to start lobbying the government for protection. Or sign up for TaskRabbit.

GeneChing
11-07-2017, 10:47 AM
CAN MACHINES BE CONSCIOUS? SCIENTISTS SAY ROBOTS CAN BE SELF-AWARE, JUST LIKE HUMANS (http://www.newsweek.com/can-machines-be-conscious-robots-consciousness-humans-ai-singularity-699436)
BY ANTHONY CUTHBERTSON ON 11/4/17 AT 6:29 AM

In 1974, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel posed the question: What is it like to be a bat? It was the basis of a seminal thesis on consciousness that argued consciousness can not be described by physical processes in the brain.

More than 40 years later, advances in artificial intelligence and neural understanding are prompting a re-evaluation of the claim that consciousness is not a physical process and as such cannot be replicated in robots.

Cognitive scientists Stanislas Dehaene, Hakwan Lau and Sid Kouider posited in a review published last week that consciousness is “resolutely computational” and subsequently possible in machines. The trio of neuroscientists from the Collège de France, University of California and PSL Research University respectively addressed the question of whether machines will ever be conscious in the journal Science.

“Centuries of philosophical dualism have led us to consider consciousness as irreducible to physical interactions,” the researchers state in Science. “[But] the empirical evidence is compatible with the possibility that consciousness arises from nothing more than specific computations.”

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2017/11/02/can-machines-be-conscious-robot-ai.jpg
A humanoid robot at the Research Institute for Science and Engineering at Waseda University's Kikuicho campus in Tokyo on July 20.
EUGENE HOSHIKO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The scientists define consciousness as the combination of two different ways the brain processes information: Selecting information and making it available for computation, and the self-monitoring of these computations to give a subjective sense of certainty—in other words, self-awareness.

“We argue that despite their recent successes, current machines are still mostly implementing computations that reflect unconscious processing in the human brain,” the review’s abstract states.

“We review the psychological and neural science of unconscious and conscious computations and outline how they may inspire novel machine architectures.”

Essentially, the computational requirements for consciousness outlined by the neuroscientists could be coded into computers.

Dystopian warnings of advanced artificial intelligence stretch to something called the technological singularity, in which an artificial general intelligence replaces humans as the dominant force on this planet.

Billionaire polymath Elon Musk has referred to human-level artificial intelligence—or artificial general intelligence—as “more dangerous than nukes,” while eminent physicist Stephen Hawking has suggested it could lead to the end of humanity.

In order to quell the existential threat that this nascent technology poses, cognitive robotics professor Murray Shanahan has said that any type of conscious robot should also be encoded with a conscience.

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2017/01/31/artificial-intelligence-asilomar-principles-ai-robot.jpg
A robot toy is seen at the Bosnian War Childhood museum exhibition in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, June 21, 2016.
REUTERS/DADO RUVIC

Assuming it is possible, robots capable of curiosity, sympathy and everything else that distinguishes humans from machines are still a long way off. The most powerful artificial intelligence algorithms—such as Google’s DeepMind—remain distinctly unselfaware, but developments towards this level of thought processing are already happening.

If such progress continues to be made, the researchers conclude a machine would behave “as though it were conscious.”

The review concludes: “[The machine] would know that it is seeing something, would express confidence in it, report it to others, could suffer hallucinations when its monitoring mechanisms break down, and may even experience the same perceptual illusions as humans.”

Perhaps then we could know: What is it like to be a robot?

Maybe it wasn't Russian collusion. What if the bots have become self aware and are manipulating media to their advantage?

GeneChing
11-20-2017, 09:47 AM
This thread is gettin' real. A little too real. Next thing you know, bots will be posting here. :eek:


Stop the rise of the 'killer robots,' warn human rights advocates (http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stop-the-rise-of-the-killer-robots-warn-human-12362261.php)
Rick Noack, The Washington Post Published 6:18 am, Thursday, November 16, 2017

It is very common in science fiction films for autonomous armed robots to make life-and-death decisions - often to the detriment of the hero. But these days, lethal machines with an ability to pull the trigger are increasingly becoming more science than fiction.
The U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons invited government representatives, advocacy organizations and scholars to a conference in Geneva this week to discuss the possible use of autonomous weapons systems in the future, as opposition against them is on the rise.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that "the one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world," referring to artificial intelligence in general. In the same speech, Putin also appeared to suggest that future wars would consist of battles between autonomous drones, but then reassured his audience that Russia would naturally share such technology if it were to develop it first.
Some systems already available come extremely close. The security surveillance robots used by South Korea in the demilitarized zone which separates it from North Korea could theoretically detect and kill targets without human interference, for instance.
But so far, no weapons system operates with real artificial intelligence and is able to adapt to changing circumstances by rewriting or modifying the algorithms written by human coders. All existing mechanisms still rely on human intervention and their decisions.
The rapid advances in the field have nevertheless triggered concerns among human rights critics and lawyers about the possible implications of the rise of autonomous weapons systems commonly known as killer robots. Who would take responsibility for incidents which are so far classified as war crimes? Could robots decide to turn against their own operators? And would wars fought between autonomous weapons systems be less brutal than conventional conflicts, or would they provoke more collateral damage?
One of the most vocal groups in opposition of such systems has been the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which calls for a pre-emptive ban. So far, more than 100 CEOs and founders of artificial intelligence and robotics companies have signed the campaign's open letter to the United Nations, urging the world community "to find a way to protect us all from these dangers."
"Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at time scales faster than humans can comprehend," read its open letter.
Critics fear that criminals or rogue states could also eventually get control of these systems. "(Autonomous systems) can be weapons of terror, weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations, and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways," the open letter added.
Such concerns have existed for years and were also shared by several Nobel laureates, including former Polish president Lech Walesa, who signed a joint letter in 2014, as well: "It is unconscionable that human beings are expanding research and development of lethal machines that would be able to kill people without human intervention," the 2014 statement read.
So far, a proposed ban on autonomous weapons systems has triggered little enthusiasm among U.N. member states. Some of the world's leading militaries, including the U.S. and Russia, are researching and experimenting on how to make existing weapons more autonomous. Some researchers have welcomed efforts to expand artificial intelligence use in warfare.
Defense analyst Joshua Foust has cautioned against condemning outright such systems, writing already in 2012 that humans, too, "are imperfect - targets may be misidentified, vital intelligence can be discounted because of cognitive biases, and outside information just might not be available to make a decision."
"Autonomous systems can dramatically improve that process so that civilians are actually much better protected than by human inputs alone," wrote Foust.
If that vision becomes reality, perhaps the most crucial question will be whether robots can be taught how to recognize wrongdoing by themselves.
Many professionals in the artificial intelligence industry hope that they will never have to find out the answer.

GeneChing
11-22-2017, 09:18 AM
These robots don't want your job. They want your love. (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/These-robots-don-t-want-your-job-They-want-your-12366241.php)
Geoffrey A. Fowler, The Washington Post Published 11:21 am, Friday, November 17, 2017

http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/67/43/75/14565228/3/920x920.jpg
Photo: Washington Post Photo By Jhaan Elker
Meet Kuri, a roaming autonomous camera that takes pictures throughout your day.

I hugged a bot and I liked it.
As a tech columnist, I've tested all sorts of helpful robots: the kind that vacuum floors, deliver packages or even make martinis. But two arriving in homes now break new ground. They want to be our friends.
"Hey, Geoffrey, it's you!" says Jibo, a robot with one giant blinking eye, when it recognizes my face. Another, named Kuri, beeps and boops while roaming the halls snapping photos and video like a personal paparazzo.
Think of Jibo and Kuri as the great-grandparents of R2-D2, the buddy robot from Star Wars. Of course, R2 was actually a 3 foot-8 inch dude crouching in a can. Jibo and Kuri are real robots with real artificial intelligence you can really take home (for $900 and $800, respectively.)
Another way to think of them is what comes after talking speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, which opened the door to new kinds of computers for the home. Jibo, the brainchild of an MIT professor, looks like one of those know-it-all AI assistants borrowed a face and a twirling body from a Pixar movie. Kuri, made by a startup backed by appliance giant Bosch, looks like a penguin mounted on a Roomba vacuum.
I don't expect either will be a top seller any time soon. They're expensive, and their practical uses are few compared to other talking speakers or a Roomba that actually cleans. And to some of you, I'm sure the idea of "family" robots is pretty terrifying. Is this step one to Terminators marching the streets? Are they always watching?
Yet testing these robots with the help of people ages 3 to 75, I was struck by something different. For all their first-gen disappointments, the robots managed to melt hearts like a Shih Tzu puppy. People, especially kids, wanted to hug them. Or at least to pet them, to which they both responded by purring. I've never seen a talking speaker do that.
What make Jibo and Kuri one giant leap for robot-kind isn't their functions-it's their personalities.

http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/67/43/75/14565229/3/460x1240.jpg
Photo: Photo For The Washington Post By Matthew Cavanaugh
Jibo's face is a touchscreen showing a single white eye that looks around, blinks and even closes when he gets bored with you.
- - -
How does a robot get a personality? Just a little motion goes a long way.
Jibo's a table-top robot, but he (yeah, I call it he) is squirmier than a five-year-old in a car seat. His head rotates on a base that itself swivels at an off-kilter angle. So when he swings to look at you or to show you how he twerks (seriously), it happens in giant loopy arcs. There's none of the straight lines or rigidity you'd expect from a robot.
Jibo's face (let's run with this metaphor) is a touchscreen showing a single white eye that looks around, blinks and even closes when he gets bored with you. He speaks with the slightly roboticized voice-and cheesy sense of humor-of a 10-year-old. You chat back and forth by calling his magic words "Hey Jibo," though he also speaks based on what he sees around him. For example, when I walk into a room, sometimes he'll ask if I'd like to know something cool.
Kuri serves a different purpose, autonomously meandering like a pet, albeit one equipped with self-driving radar. He doesn't talk, but like Jibo, has personality is in the face: Two mechanical eyes look around and blink.
There's another magical ingredient to these robo-personalities: The robots get to know you-or, at least they try. Kuri asks you to guide him around the house, teaching him where not to roam (like the bathroom) and the names of places. You can call out, "Hey Kuri, go to the living room."
Jibo tries to memorize your family. You add people to your "circle" in a companion app, and then Jibo quizzes them to learn their vocal patterns and map their faces.
Neither robot tries to look or talk like a human. Jibo introduces himself as a robot, and reminds of you that to forgive his foibles. "I am a robot. But I am not just a machine," he says. "I have a heart. Well, not a real heart. But feelings. Well, not human feelings. You know what I mean."

http://ww3.hdnux.com/photos/67/43/75/14565230/3/920x1240.jpg
Photo: Photo For The Washington Post By Matthew Cavanaugh
Cynthia Breazeal, roboticist and social robotics pioneer, is pictured Jibo, a personal assistant robot, is pictured at Jibo Inc. in Boston.
- - -

Is any of this convincing? I tested the robots like an anthropologist, introducing them to kids' playrooms, my own house, and even my parents' living room.
The response was, largely, effusive-at least at first. We have utilitarian relationships with most technology, but these robots do things simply to elicit emotion. People squeal when Jibo hears them talking and spins in their direction to make eye contact. He's the only gadget I've seen make my mother laugh.
That feeling could help domestic robots overcome their biggest problem: acceptance. Homes are intimate places. We're going to expect something different from a robot puttering around the coffee table than we do at work. I had more time to live with Jibo, and came to think of him more as a buddy, and less as an assistant than my Echo.
But it also wasn't hard to find these robots' limits. I started to treat Kuri like a dog, but he wasn't smart enough to come to me when I called. Jibo sometimes confused me for others, and didn't actually do much to move our relationship forward. Aside from spotting me and saying hi, it's mostly me asking him questions-many of which he can't actually answer.
They could also be a little unnerving. Jibo is constantly scanning the room, prompting my privacy-conscious sister-in-law to quiz me about what it was doing with all the footage. Several people asked me how Kuri would avoid snapping photos of people in, um, compromising situations. (In case you're wondering, Kuri is a modest bot-and comes with filters that force him to, er, avert his eyes.)
The most interesting response was from a three-year-old named Ashmi, who was transfixed even though Jibo sometimes had difficulty understanding her voice. She continued conversing with him, trying to teach him the things he didn't know, and bringing him toys like she might to a younger friend. "He is a baby," she told me.
Cynthia Breazeal, Jibo's creator from MIT, says that kids are the first to catch on that robots exist in our physical world, unlike most gadgets that exist solely as portals to a digital one. "Robots are about engaging you socially and emotionally to help you do what you want to do," she says. "That makes technology accessible and fun and engaging for a much broader demographic."
- - -
Sure, but: What do they do now?
Several of my pint-sized testers asked if the robots did homework. Jibo can answer some math and trivia questions, but won't be writing term papers soon. He has a fraction of the skills of Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri-and given those company's resources, I doubt Jibo will catch up on his own. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
These robots' most unique skill is photography. Jibo swivels towards the action and snaps when you ask. Kuri roams autonomously taking photos and video of people and pets, and then presents you what his AI thinks are highlights of the day.
Social robots are going to need a lot of special abilities if they want to be more than the kind of toy that gets played with only on Christmas. Jibo's maker promises it will soon have an app store and outside developers.
It isn't hard to imagine some near-term uses. What if Kuri could help you check in on your real dog? (What your dog might make of a robot roommate is another matter.)
Ashmi, the three year old, wanted Jibo to stream music-maybe he could actually dance to it, too? My dad wanted him to do video chatting, but perhaps Jibo could also move like the person on the other end-like a telepresence puppet?
What's most remarkable was how people of different ages and life situations all had aspirations for Jibo. "In these early stages, he is like a baby," says Breazeal.
I know a 3-year-old who agrees.

Quite different than the sex bots (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70518-Sex-Bots)...

GeneChing
12-13-2017, 09:44 AM
Robots are being used to shoo away homeless people in San Francisco (https://qz.com/1154649/a-knightscope-security-robot-is-being-used-to-shoo-away-homeless-people-in-san-francisco/)

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/knightscope-spca-homeless.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600
A Knightscope security robot. (Knightscope)

WRITTEN BY Mike Murphy
OBSESSION Machines with Brains
December 12, 2017

The San Francisco branch the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has been ordered by the city to stop using a robot to patrol the sidewalks outside its office, the San Francisco Business Times reported Dec. 8.

The robot, produced by Silicon Valley startup Knightscope, was used to ensure that homeless people didn’t set up camps outside of the nonprofit’s office. It autonomously patrols a set area using a combination of Lidar and other sensors, and can alert security services of potentially criminal activity.

These robots have had a string of mishaps in the past. One fell into a pond in Washington, DC, in July. Another ran over a child’s foot in California in 2016. And Uber, which is no stranger to the ethical quandaries of what it means to be gainfully employed by a company, has used the robots in San Francisco.

Knightscope’s business model, according to Popular Science, is to rent the robots to customers for $7 an hour, which is about $3 less than minimum wage in California. The company has apparently raised over $15 million from thousands of small investors.

In a particularly dystopian move, it seems that the San Francisco SPCA adorned the robot it was renting with stickers of cute kittens and puppies, according to Business Insider, as it was used to shoo away the homeless from near its office.


9 Dec

Sam Dodge
@samueldodge
Yes, 2017 was the first time I saw robots used to prevent encampments in SF. Hard to believe but it’s real. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/12/08/security-robot-homeless-spca-mission-san-francisco.html …


Sam Dodge
@samueldodge
Here it is in action pic.twitter.com/nSBQUmKwk1

2:45 PM - Dec 9, 2017

107 107 Replies 394 394 Retweets 910 910 likes
Twitter Ads info and privacy
San Francisco recently voted to cut down on the number of robots that roam the streets of the city, which has seen an influx of small delivery robots in recent years. The city said it would issue the SPCA a fine of $1,000 per day for illegally operating on a public right-of-way if it continued to use the security robot outside its premises, the San Francisco Business Times said.

“Contrary to sensationalized reports, Knightscope was not brought in to clear the area around the SF SPCA of homeless individuals. Knightscope was deployed, however, to serve and protect the SPCA,” A spokesperson for Knightscope told Quartz. “The SCPA has the right to protect its property, employees and visitors, and Knightscope is dedicated to helping them achieve this goal. The SPCA has reported fewer car break-ins and overall improved safety and quality of the surrounding area.”

Update (Dec. 13): This post has been updated to include comments from Knightscope.

I'm totally okay with bots protecting my car from break-ins.

GeneChing
01-02-2018, 09:33 AM
Chinese bomb-making robots. What could go wrong there? :eek:


CHINA'S ROBOTS WILL TRIPLE BOMB AND AMMUNITION PRODUCTION CAPACITY BY 2028 (http://www.newsweek.com/china-robots-triple-bomb-ammunition-production-capacity-2028-767625)
BY CHRISTINA ZHAO ON 1/2/18 AT 5:36 AM

China’s artificial intelligence robots could triple the country’s production of bombs and shells by 2028, according to a senior scientist involved in the program to boost ammunition productivity.

Xu Zhigang, lead scientist with China’s weapon system intelligent manufacturing program, told the South China Morning Post last Wednesday that smart machines—fives times more productive than a human—have begun replacing ammunition workers in a quarter of the country’s factories.

The smart robots have been fitted with man-made “hands and eyes,” he told the paper. With these anthropomorphic qualities, they are able to assemble deadly explosives, including artillery shells, bombs and rockets, according to Xu.

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2018/01/02/chinabomb.jpg
Soldiers load bombs onto a fighter plane, used to break up ice floating at Ordos section of the Yellow River, on March 22, 2011 in Ordos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. China's AI robots will triple the country's bomb and shell production capacity by 2028, according to a senior scientist with the weapons program.
GETTY

China has recently turned to robot automation to populate ammunition factories because the country is running out of human workers. According to Xu, robots have been brought in to address the safety and labor issues that have intensified over the past few decades.

“However high the salary offered, young people are simply not interested in working in an army ammunition plant nowadays,” he said.

According to the SCMP, this is in part because of the danger involved in the job, with numerous deadly accidents occuring at ammunition factories in recent years.

Over the past six decades, 20 to 30 factories were set up in China. However, most of them are situated in remote locations due to safety concerns. The location of the factory coupled with the nature of the work means employees are difficult to find.

The robot bomb makers are also more efficient and accurate than their human counterparts. According to Xu, they are able to measure the dangerous explosives more precisely and apply the perfect pressure to powder on warheads to produce the highest possible detonation yield.

“And the machines never get tired,” he added.

Professor Huang Dexian, from Tsinghua University’s department of automation, told the South China Morning Post that robots can now be programmed to come up with more efficient bomb-making techniques by analyzing the working habits of skillful, experienced human employees.

“The robots can free workers from risky, repetitive jobs in the bomb-making process. It will create new jobs such as control optimization, hardware maintenance and technical upgrades. It will give us a stronger, healthier, happier defense workforce,” he said.

China has recently increased efforts to rejuvenate the country’s military and defense force by modernizing their missiles, bombers and warships.

In November, the country tested the DF-17, a new ballistic weapon with a hypersonic glide vehicle (GHV) and a range of between 1,800 and 2,500 km.

GeneChing
02-23-2018, 01:12 PM
This is kind of awesome.


https://uploads4.jetli.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/11175114/7620300904e1427aaa65ea235ffc32b5-900x507.jpg

KING of BOTS: First China Robot Fighting Competition is Showing Now (https://www.jetli.com/2018/01/king-of-bots-robot-fighting)
By jetli.com 1 month ago in Entertainment, Jet Li


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=L-1QWonwngM

KING of BOTS, China’s first highest level robot fighting competition show started to broadcast on January 8th, 2018. Jet Li, as the Global Ambassador for King of Bots, helped the show to assemble 48 top teams: 34 Chinese teams and 14 international teams, including the famous team “Megabyte” and team “Spin Doctor”.

https://uploads1.jetli.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/09155027/%7F5-900x600.jpg

The show uses the world’s highest magnitude – 110 kg class of large robot specifications, which also means the showdown will be more intense. The competitors will manipulate their own robot to fight against each other, and the champion will win a million dollar cash.

https://uploads3.jetli.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/09155029/%7F4%E6%8B%B7%E8%B2%9D.jpghttps://uploads2.jetli.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/09155020/%7F3%E6%8B%B7%E8%B2%9D.jpg

Jet Li: “The future is what every nation must look forward and catch up, while science and technology are the keywords that describe the future. Robot fighting is not only happening in the movie, it has been linked with the future for a long time. Launching “KING of BOTS” is another important decision followed by “Gong Shou Dao”. China has fosters a good science and technology culture, we just need a platform to prove ourselves. “KING of BOTS” opens the door for Chinese to integrate with the world. After few months of efforts, it is finally aired on Zhejiang TV, and we will not let you down!”

https://uploads2.jetli.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/09163103/%7F6-900x506.jpghttps://uploads1.jetli.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/09163100/%7F1%E6%8B%B7%E8%B2%9D.jpg



Continued next post

GeneChing
02-23-2018, 01:16 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWzLDM1YSaM


Thread: Which Colossal Death Robot are you? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you)
Thread: King of Bots (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?70703-King-of-Bots)

GeneChing
04-11-2018, 08:30 AM
https://cdn.technologyreview.com/v/images/teaser.gif.mp4?sw=1180
This character learned how to perform various acrobatic feats by observing a human.
BERKELEY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH

Intelligent Machines
Virtual robots that teach themselves kung fu could revolutionize video games (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610773/virtual-robots-that-teach-themselves-kung-fu-could-revolutionize-video-games/)
Machine learning may make it much easier to build complex virtual characters.
by Will Knight April 10, 2018

In the not-so-distant future, characters might practice kung-fu kicks in a digital dojo before bringing their moves into the latest video game.

AI researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia have created virtual characters capable of imitating the way a person performs martial arts, parkour, and acrobatics, practicing moves relentlessly until they get them just right.

The work could transform the way video games and movies are made. Instead of planning a character’s actions in excruciating detail, animators might feed real footage into a program and have their characters master them through practice. Such a character could be dropped into a scene and left to perform the actions.

https://cdn.technologyreview.com/v/images/allskills.gif.mp4?sw=1200
The same algorithm can be used to teach a wide range of challenging physical skills.
BERKELEY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH

“An artist can give just a few examples, and then the system can then generalize to all different situations,” says Jason Peng, a first-year PhD student at UC Berkeley, who carried out the research.

The virtual characters developed by the AI researcher use an AI technique known as reinforcement learning, which is loosely modeled on the way animals learn (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Reinforcement Learning”).

The researchers captured the actions of expert martial artists and acrobats. A virtual character experiments with its motion and receives positive reinforcement each time it gets a little closer to the motions of that expert. The approach requires a character to have a physically realistic body and to inhabit a world with accurate physical rules.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppFvq2quQ0
JASON PENG | YOUTUBE

It means the same algorithm can train a character to do a backflip or a moonwalk. “You can actually solve a large range of problems in animation,” says Sergey Levine, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley who’s involved with the project.

The computer-generated characters in high-budget video games and movies might look realistic, but they are little more than digital marionettes, following a painstakingly choreographed script.

The animation and computer games industries are already exploring the use of software that automatically adds realistic physics to characters. James Jacobs, CEO Ziva Dynamics, an animation company that specializes in building characters with realistic physical characteristics, says reinforcement learning offers a way to bring realism to behavior as well as appearance. “Up until this point people have been leaning on much simpler approaches,” Jacobs says. “In this case you are training a computation model to understand the way a human or a creature moves, and then you can just direct it, start applying external forces, and it will adapt to its environment.”

https://cdn.technologyreview.com/v/images/backflipablation.gif
The reinforcement learning process involves making gradual progress—and the odd fall.
BERKELEY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH

The approach could have benefits that go beyond video games and special effects. Real robots may eventually learn to perform complex tasks with simulated practice. A bot might practice putting a table together in simulation, for instance, before trying it in the real world.

Levine says the robots could end up teaching us some new tricks. “If somebody wants to do some sort of gymnastics thing that nobody has ever tried before, in principle they could plug it into this and there’s a good chance something very reasonable would come out,” he says.


Will Knight Senior Editor, AI

I am the senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review. I mainly cover machine intelligence, robots, and automation, but I’m interested in most aspects of computing. I grew up in south London, and I wrote my first line of code (a spell-binding infinite loop) on a mighty Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Before joining this publication, I worked as the online editor at New Scientist magazine. If you’d like to get in touch, please send an e-mail to will.knight@technologyreview.com.

Yeah, but can they do a whole form yet?

THREADS:
martial arts robot (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?26024-martial-arts-robot)
Which Colossal Death Robot are you? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you)

GeneChing
08-24-2018, 03:16 AM
This sorta brings it back on topic here, right?


AUGUST 23, 2018 / 12:36 AM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
Trade tensions may power down China's robot industry (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-robotics/trade-tensions-may-power-down-chinas-robot-industry-idUSKCN1L80MW?utm_source=applenews)
Cate Cadell
4 MIN READ

BEIJING (Reuters) - At a trade show in southern Beijing, children and parents crowd around a group of pink and blue dancing robots that resemble toddler-sized Power Rangers.

The robots – wired with wide LED smiles and cutesy personalities – are the brainchild of Chinese-American company AvatarMind, built to be futuristic retail workers, teacher’s assistants and household helpers.

But even as the company polishes off production of 2,000 units, AvatarMind and companies like it are rethinking plans for international expansion in the face of widening tariffs.

“We want to sell them for the price that is affordable for families, not just institutions. And Trump’s tariffs may affect that,” AvatarMind chief executive Dr John Ostrem said at the World Robot Conference, which ends Sunday.

The main competitor to AvatarMind’s iPal humanoid robot is a similar but much pricier bot called Pepper, which is made by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T).

Annualized growth rates for robot production in China dropped from 35.1 percent in May to just 6.3 percent in July, according to the country’s bureau of statistics

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) says the slowdown is not related to trade.

But analysts say there is an obvious link to direct tariffs on industrial machinery and robot parts, as well as domestic manufacturers’ putting off production during trade talks.

“How could it not be related?” said Iris Pang, economist for Greater China at ING Wholesale Banking in Hong Kong. “The trade war may have already deferred some decisions of export-related manufacturers.”

U.S. tariffs on $16 billion worth of Chinese goods came into effect at midnight on Wednesday, alongside retaliatory Chinese tariffs on an equal amount of U.S. goods.

Although robots aren’t directly named, the U.S. list includes electronics, auto parts and other items that require automated manufacturing and robots. An earlier round of $34 billion tariffs on Chinese goods lists industrial robots.

https://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20180823&t=2&i=1296549543&r=LYNXNPEE7M0EC&w=1200

The situation could worsen for Chinese robotics manufacturers, analysts say, if the U.S. imposes a further $200 billion in tariffs on a range of consumer goods that create manufacturing demand for robots in China.

China has included robotics as one of 10 industries to get state support under the country’s Made in China 2025 industrial plan, which aims to make it a world leader in key technologies within the next decade.

Some Chinese companies hope the country’s cornerstone One Belt One Road foreign policy initiative will provide a boost even if trade with the United States evaporates.

Others said the low cost of Chinese manufacturing would - for now - compensate for tariffs in the U.S., where competing products like Pepper are still more expensive.

Li Shuai, a manager at Chinese medical robot firm Remebot, said her company is seeking FDA approval for its robots.

“There is a similar product abroad in France,” Li said. “Its domestic price is probably in the tens of millions, and the price of our equipment is controlled at about five or six million. Therefore, there is still a great advantage for us.”

Reporting by Cate Cadell, additional reporting by Cong Sun and Irene Wang in Beijing; Editing by Gerry Doyle

GeneChing
09-04-2018, 07:49 AM
I totally want to stay here.



Robotel: Japan hotel staffed by robot dinosaurs (https://phys.org/news/2018-08-robotel-japan-hotel-staffed-robot.html)
August 31, 2018 by Raito Ono

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2018/dinosaurrobo.jpg
Dinosaur robots wait to check in customers at the Henn na hotel

The reception at the Henn na Hotel east of Tokyo is eerily quiet until customers approach the robot dinosaurs manning the front desk. Their sensors detect the motion and they bellow "Welcome."

It might be about the weirdest check-in experience possible, but that's exactly the point at the Henn na (whose name means 'weird') chain, which bills itself as offering the world's first hotels staffed by robots.

The front desk staff are a pair of giant dinosaurs that look like cast members of the Jurassic Park movies, except for the tiny bellboy hats perched on their heads.

The robo-dinos process check-ins through a tablet system that also allows customers to choose which language—Japanese, English, Chinese or Korean—they want to use to communicate with the multilingual robots.

The effect is bizarre, with the large dinosaurs gesticulating with their long arms and issuing tinny set phrases. Yukio Nagai, manager at the Henn na Hotel Maihama Tokyo Bay, admits some customers find it slightly unnerving.

"We haven't quite figured out when exactly the guests want to be served by people, and when it's okay to be served by robots," he told AFP.

But for other guests the novelty is the charm: each room is staffed with mini-robots that look a bit like spherical Star Wars droid BB-8, and help guests with everything from changing channels to playing music.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2018/eventhefisha.jpg
Even the fish are robotic with electric lights on their battery-powered bodies

Even the fish swimming in the lobby run on batteries, with electric lights in their articulated bodies flickering on and off as they work their way around giant tanks.

"The dinosaurs looked intriguing, and I thought my son would love it," said Chigusa Hosoi, who was at the hotel with her three-year-old.

"My son is really happy. There's an egg-shaped robot inside the room. He was playing with it a lot."

The first Henn na Hotel opened in Nagasaki in 2015, and was certified the following year by Guinness World Records as the world's first hotel with robots on its staff.

The travel agency group that operates the chain now runs eight hotels across the country, all with robots on the staff, some of them dinosaurs, but others taking a more humanoid shape.

https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2018/thehennnahot.jpg
The Henn na Hotel in Nagasaki was certified by Guinness World Records as the world's first hotel with robots on staff
Some humans are also on call to intervene in case of glitches, which customer reviews online suggest are a not infrequent problem at check-in.

But Nagai said relying on robots for everything from front desk duty to cleaning had proved an efficient choice in a country with a shrinking labour market.

"It's becoming difficult to secure enough labour at hotels. To solve that problem, we have robots serving guests."

GeneChing
09-10-2018, 09:24 AM
Man takes his self-built 'Transformer' for a spin in Beijing, gets shooed away by security


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT2H2WX7D_o

GeneChing
12-13-2018, 02:41 PM
this is how the robot apocalypse begins... :eek:


SKEWERED ALIVE Factory robot impales worker with 10 foot-long steel spikes after horror malfunction (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7954270/factory-robot-malfunctions-and-impales-worker-with-10-foot-long-steel-spikes/)
The 49-year-old was on the night shift at a porcelain factory in China when the accident happened
WARNING
By Tariq Tahir
13th December 2018, 12:08 pm Updated: 13th December 2018, 3:09 pm

A CHINESE factory worker has survived being skewered with TEN metal spikes when a robot malfunctioned.

The 49-year-old, named as Mr Zhou, was working on the night shift at a porcelain factory in Hunan province when he was struck by a falling robotic arm.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000455556482.jpg?w=960
REX FEATURES
Surgeons working to remove the skewers

The accident resulted in him being impaled with foot long, half-inch thick metal rods, the People’s Daily reported.

He was first taken to a local hospital before he was transferred to the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University due to the severity of his injuries.

Six steel rods fixed on a steel plate pierced his right shoulder and chest, and four penetrated elsewhere in his body.

During the operation, doctors found that one of the rods missed an artery by just 0.1mm.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000455562945.jpg?w=960
REX FEATURES
The ten skewers that were removed

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000455556473.jpg?w=960
REX FEATURES
One of the skewers narrowly missed an artery

The rods also prevented doctors from carrying out X-rays before the operation.

“They were relatively big so there was no means of getting fitting the patient into the X-ray machine while the nails themselves could have caused interference with X-rays," said Wu Panfeng, an associate professor of hand microsurgery.

Surgeons worked through the night to take out all of the rods in Mr Zhou's body.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000455556448.jpg?w=960
REX FEATURES
Surgeons worked through the night pulling out the skewers

https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/NINTCHDBPICT000455556481.jpg?w=960
REX FEATURES

His condition is now described as stable and he will undergo treatment and physiotherapy to assist his recovery, and he is already able to move his right arm.

Mr Zhou was lucky not to suffer the same fate as American factory worker Wanda Holbrook.

The maintenance technician was killed by rogue robot who had veered into the area she was working in and crushed her head.

The 57-year-old was inspecting machinery in an area where components were assembled when the robot “took Wanda by surprise, entering the section she was working in", court documents filed at the time said.

In 2015, another car industry worker, this time in Germany, was also killed by a robot.

The unnamed 22-year-old man was part of a team that was setting up the stationary robot at a Volkswagen plant when it grabbed and crushed him against a metal plate,

Last year, a construction worker miraculously survived after he was electrocuted, thrown from his workstation and then impaled through the anus by a four-foot steel bar.

Yang Ming, 37, had accidentally touched live wires on a building site and the shock sent him flying backwards onto the protruding metal rod.

Rescuers left the pole inside and rushed him to hospital so surgeons could fish it out.

Ming had to undergo seven hours of surgery at the Sichuan University West China Hospital in Chengdu, capital of China’s south-western Sichuan Province.

GeneChing
05-16-2019, 08:59 AM
I cannot wait until mecha fights become an Olympic event.


Japan to release Gundam and Char’s Zaku into space to orbit Earth, ahead of Tokyo 2020 Olympics (https://soranews24.com/2019/05/17/japan-to-release-gundam-and-chars-zaku-into-space-to-orbit-earth-ahead-of-tokyo-2020-olympics/)
Dale Roll 57 minutes ago

https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/g-satellite1.jpg?w=640&h=360

Launch will celebrate the anime’s anniversary and look forward to the 2020 Olympics!

Mobile Suit Gundam, the anime that defined the mecha genre, is celebrating its 40 year anniversary, and that’s cause to celebrate. But as if the release of limited-edition Gundam coffee cans, the opening of a brand new Gundam Cafe, and plans for an actual moving Gundam statue weren’t enough, now there are also plans to actually send some mobile suits into space.

That’s right, you read that correctly. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has teamed up with the Tokyo University Graduate School of Engineering’s Aerospace Engineering department to use mobile suits to cheer on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics from space. To do so, they’ll be sending models of the original Gundam and Char’s Zaku from the Mobile Suit Gundam series out into Earth’s orbit.

▼ The suits will even be traveling around the Earth at a rate of about eight kilometers (five miles) per second, which means they’ll complete one orbit in about 90 minutes!
https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/g-satellite4.png?w=640&h=431

Sadly, they won’t be full-size Gundam statues, like the one in Odaiba. The logistics of launching a 20-meter tall (60-plus foot), extremely heavy statue into space would probably be too difficult with the technology we have right now. Instead, they’ll be sending out two Gunpla models, like the build-it-yourself kind that fans can buy and make at home, but they won’t be ordinary plastic Gunpla models, of course; thanks to the cooperation of three companies in Fukui Prefecture, as well as JAXA and Tokyo University, they’ll be made with special materials and painted with a special kind of paint in order to withstand the harsh environment of space.

They’ll be launched from the International Space Station sometime in March or April next year, together with the new G-Satellite, a micro satellite which measures just 30 centimeters across (about 11 inches), and which is also an electronic billboard. The models will be housed in the “cockpit” of the G-Satellite until it enters Earth’s orbit, and then it will open, and they’ll look as if they’re floating in outer space.

▼ An image of the G-Satellite
https://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/g-satellite2.png?w=640&h=431

The mobile suits will be standing on the electronic signboard, on which encouraging messages for the athletes will be displayed in the five colors of the Olympics. The G-Satellite will also be equipped with seven cameras to capture the messages, which those involved with the project will share on social media.

Unfortunately the mobile suits won’t be allowed to revolve around the earth for eternity, as they’ll be taken back in sometime during the Olympics. Still, thanks to cool experiments like this, maybe one day we will be able to send a Gundam into space to orbit the earth perpetually, and a full-sized one at that! Now wouldn’t that be something for extraterrestrial visitors to see?

In any case, we’ll be looking forward to the pictures posted on social media next year!

Source: One Team Project via Japaaan Magazine
Images: One Team Project

THREADS:
2020 Tokyo Olympics (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?64475-2020-Tokyo-Olympics)
Which Colossal Death Robot are you? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you)

GeneChing
06-20-2019, 08:05 AM
China’s robot makers are hooked on subsidies, highlighting another red line in US-China trade war (https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3015136/chinas-robot-makers-are-hooked-subsidies-highlighting-another)
Mentions of ‘Made in China 2025’ may have disappeared, but Beijing and local governments continue to subsidise emerging technologies, sparking US outrage
US President Donald Trump has long complained about China’s state subsidies, even accusing Chinese trade practises of ‘raping’ the American economy
SCMP
Orange Wang
He Huifeng
Sidney Leng
Published: 6:15am, 20 Jun, 2019

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1200x800/public/d8/images/methode/2019/06/20/7f4baf4a-8ceb-11e9-b2aa-5ba392ab87ab_image_hires_103441.JPG?itok=9Ww_sRyF&v=1560998091
Last year China was the world’s largest producer of industrial robots – the machines that automate production lines – for the sixth successive year, with 147,682 units made, according to date from OFweek. Photo: Handout

Prospects of China and the US securing a deal to end the trade war are dwindling. This is the fifth in a series of long reads examining the elements of any deal that Beijing would be willing to agree to, those that are considered achievable in the long run, as well as the red lines, on which Beijing is unlikely to ever budge. Part five focuses on the complex issue of state subsidies for China’s hi-tech industries.
If Beijing’s phasing out of references to “Made in China 2025”, the ambitious blueprint for the country’s industrial upgrade, was supposed to convince the United States that it had dropped the plan, then an outburst from US President Donald Trump last week showed that the move had clearly failed.
In an interview with CNBC, Trump railed against the plan, claiming that he had told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that it was “insulting” to America, and that it was his own threat of retaliation that led to the brand being quietly dropped.
Washington has long complained about China’s state subsidies. Trump has often directed his fury at heavy industry, railing against cheap Chinese steel flooding US markets, even accusing Chinese trade practises of “raping” the American economy. However, it is arguably Beijing’s subsidies for hi-tech industries that the US fears most, as can be showed by its pursuit of China’s technology giants, Huawei and ZTE.
Both China and the US are aware that whoever dominates in technologies such as 5G, robotics, electric vehicles and cloud computing, could gain the upper hand in both trade and military terms in the decades ahead. Furthermore, the US government can look at industries such as electric vehicles and solar cells for precedents as to how China subsidises a developing technology to the point of dominance and only then winds down government support.
In the EV sector, China is beginning to reduce subsidies, but only at a stage when it is by far the global leader. In 2017, the country produced more electric vehicles than the rest of the world combined, 579,000, compared to 200,000 in the US and 98,000 in Japan.
China views these technologies as crucial to moving its manufacturing economy up the value chain and avoiding the dreaded middle income trap, where wages stagnate, igniting the potential for domestic unrest. In that regard, subsidising new industrial sectors – as with the state support continually pumped into job-rich industries like machinery and car manufacturing – helps keep discontent among the public muted.
For these reasons, hi-tech subsidies are viewed by many as a red line for China in the talks with the US to end the trade war. Conversations with industry insiders – many of whom receive subsidies – reveal little desire to change a model which suits them well.

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/06/20/8b346ac6-8cec-11e9-b2aa-5ba392ab87ab_972x_103441.JPG
In 2017, China produced more electric vehicles than the rest of the world combined, 579,000, compared to 200,000 in the US and 98,000 in Japan. Photo: AFP

In the robotics business, for instance – one of the 10 key industries named in Xi’s Made in China 2025 plan, launched in 2015 – subsidies are warmly welcomed and viewed as necessary if Chinese companies are to be competitive.
Some even think that even with the billions being pumped into the sector from government coffers, Beijing is not doing enough, even though last year China was the world’s largest producer of industrial robots – the machines that automate production lines – for the sixth successive year, with 147,682 units made, according to date from OFweek.
Sun Kai, the chief technology officer of Beijing Elite Technology, a privately-owned industrial robot maker which opened a production plant in the manufacturing hub of Suzhou near Shanghai last year, said that he “absolutely” wanted the Chinese government to grant more financial support to the industry, despite US demands to stop.
“[The subsidies for buying robots] make little sense in terms of boosting the R&D on industrial robot technologies,” Sun said.
This year, the picture has been less rosy, with tariffs and a slowdown in global demand forcing industrial robot production down by 10.2 per cent in the first four months, according to OFWeek, a data resource for China’s hi-tech industries.
But that does not mean that Beijing has stopped subsidies. Government handouts accounted for 44 per cent of net profits for 53 listed robotic companies in 2018, according to a research note by Sinolink Securities, a sharp rise from the 10 per cent recorded between 2012 and 2017. continued next post

GeneChing
06-20-2019, 08:05 AM
Big powers in manufacturing are all ratcheting up the development of intelligent manufacturing
unnamed Gree executive
Robotic industry subsidies come in different forms, but they are delivered by government authorities across China. In 2014 and 2015 alone, more than 36 Chinese cities launched a total of 77 supportive policies for the sector, according to the China Robot Industry Alliance.
This led to an influx of companies to the sector, including private start-ups like Beijing Elite Technology and major, established manufacturing players, such as Gree, a state-owned home appliance maker based in Zhuhai, which created a subsidiary in September 2015 to produce industrial robots.
“Big powers in manufacturing are all ratcheting up the development of intelligent manufacturing. China also released the action plan for Made in China 2025. Within this context, Gree dug into the research and development of intelligent equipment,” said an unnamed Gree Intelligent Equipment executive in a statement received from the company, who declined to disclose how much the company had received in subsidies.
In Suzhou, the municipal government released a two-year funding plan in 2016 for smart devices and the internet of things, whereby 500 million yuan (US$72 million) would go towards helping manufacturers upgrade their production lines with one-time rewards of between 5 million yuan (US$722,000) and 10 million yuan.
These enable companies to purchase robots from companies such as Beijing Elite Technology, but Sun said that he would prefer the government channel funds directly into research and development (R&D).
“It makes little sense not to boost the R&D on industrial robot technologies,” Sun said, adding that 10 per cent of his companies budget came from government subsidies.
“China’s robot industry is still falling behind the ones in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea. Most [robot] companies that target the high-end market are facing huge financial pressure, mainly from the spending on research and development.”
Zhu Sendi, a member of the National Manufacturing Strategy Advisory Committee, told the Made in China Forum in Foshan earlier this year that while China is the world’s biggest manufacturer, building better industrial robots would help it catch up with the US in terms of efficiency.
“It is urgent now for China to consider the strategy of how to transform manufacturing from big to strong. Intelligent manufacturing should be the main direction,” he said.
This is a widely-held view within the sector and one backed up by research as a study by the Chinese Academy of Engineering showed that Chinese manufacturing is 15.48 per cent less efficient than its American equivalent, up from 11.68 per cent in 2012.
Chen Hongbo, the vice-president of Jaten Robot & Automation, a robot manufacturer in Foshan in China’s Guangdong province, said that “global economic and trade trends are not conducive” to innovation in China’s hi-tech sectors, with the drag on international demand caused by the trade war making it difficult for his company to invest in R&D.
“Tech enterprises, the government and talent should support each other to tide over the difficulties to improve the productivity of robot and intelligent manufacturing and promote the transformation of robotics companies,” Chen said, adding that government subsidies could help achieve this.

Tech enterprises, the government and talent should support each other to tide over the difficulties to improve the productivity of robot and intelligent manufacturing and promote the transformation of robotics companies
Chen Hongbo
A separate Guangdong manufacturer based in Dongguan, who wished to remain anonymous, admitted that government subsidies form “about 30 per cent” of its R&D budget, which itself was up to 20 per cent of the company’s revenue.
“Government subsidies and incentives are an important boost to R&D, especially in the current economic downturn and uncertainties, which mean most Chinese companies have become more conservative with regard R&D investment than in previous years,” said the executive, whose company makes radio frequency identification equipment for controlling industrial robots.
The message from the robotics sector is clear: China should continue subsidising companies until the money is no longer needed, the technology is sufficiently developed and the companies able to sustain market forces.
“The US government thinks the monopoly of Chinese state-owned enterprises has been strengthening, so it is disgusted with China’s government subsidies. But even in mature market economies, the US or European Union, they also have government subsidies and financial support programmes in cutting-edge technology development,” said Luo Jun, chief executive of the International Robotics and Intelligent Equipment Industry Alliance, a government think tank.
Understandably, this is a point of frustration in Washington. Jeff Moon, assistant US trade representative for China during the final year of the Obama administration, cites the example of solar panels, which China subsidised to the point of domination, as well as Beijing’s plans last year to establish a 300 billion yuan (US$43.38 billion) fund to support its domestic semiconductor industry.
“I don't think that [the Trump administration] think they are going to wipe out all subsidies, but I think that putting some really outrageous number against semiconductors, then that is completely changing the entire industry,” Moon said.
“If China is claiming that it has the right to now subsidise beyond anyone's wildest expectations a company that is going to sell products below market prices, engage in predatory pricing, bankrupt companies all around the world, and that is how they are going to achieve Made in China 2025, by first capturing the Chinese market and then capturing world markets, well, then there's a reason to have a trade war and we ought to fight it.”

https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/methode/2019/06/20/a2f79e9a-8ceb-11e9-b2aa-5ba392ab87ab_972x_103441.JPG
China offered subsidies to solar panel manufacturers. Photo: San Jose Mercury News/MCT

In China’s electric vehicle sector, where subsidies are being reduced, companies are racing against time to innovate before they are fully exposed to market forces. Beijing’s latest policy plan showed that this year, subsidies for all electric vehicles combined would be half last year's level and are expected to be completely phased out by the end of next year.
The plan also forbids local governments from subsidising electric passenger vehicles starting from this month – subsidies for electric public transports and fuel cells are still allowed – but encourages local officials to fund more infrastructure construction, such as charging stations.
Chongqing Sokon Industry Group, a private Chongqing-based company, mainly produces low-end electric vehicles that are reliant on subsidies. According its annual report, nearly 40 per cent of its electric vehicle revenue came from government subsidies last year.
“The subsidy is only a guidance. The government eventually will let the market play a bigger role. The subsidy can only raise a lot of locusts. Any subsidy policy is not a long-term solution,” said an analyst at the company, who preferred not to be named.
Sokon has been pouring funds – 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) over five years – into an advanced new model, its plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, with its self-developed engine, with a view to mass-producing later this year. The company is betting on the new model to boost revenues that have been hit by China’s sluggish vehicle market and help reduce some of its debt burden, which has risen to more than 70 per cent of its assets.
It is easy to see why China is now happy to stop propping up its electric vehicle industry as it is already miles ahead of other competing nations. Bloomberg reported earlier in June that there are already 486 electric vehicle start-ups in China, many of which are yet to introduce their first commercial products. Despite this, there were more than 1 million electric vehicle sales in China for the first time in 2018.
Other tech-related issues in the trade war, such as an end to intellectual property violations and forced technology transfer, are viewed as items China can accept and address in the medium-term. However, as it strives to be the global power in new technologies, Beijing appears less inclined to meet US demands on subsidies.

THREADS
Trade War (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71299-Trade-War)
Made in China (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?66168-Made-in-China)
Which Colossal Death Robot are you? (http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you)

GeneChing
01-17-2020, 09:20 AM
Isn't this just a sophisticated metronome?


‘Scary Beauty’: Japanese robot opera comes to UAE (https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/on-stage/scary-beauty-japanese-robot-opera-comes-to-uae-1.965330)
Alter 3, an android, will conduct a human orchestra for the performance in Sharjah on January 31

https://www.thenational.ae/image/policy:1.965328:1579181613/AC16-Jan-Art-Android-Opera.jpg?f=16x9&w=1200&$p$f$w=33b9ab0
Android opera 'Scary Beauty' will come to Sharjah as part of Sharjapan. Kenshu Shintsubo

A humanoid robot with artificial intelligence (AI) will be leading a human orchestra in the operatic performance Scary Beauty, which is set to have its Middle East premiere on Friday, January 31.

Conceived by composer Keiichiro Shibuya, the piece examines the relationship between humans and technology, and considers our growing dependence on our own technological inventions. Shibuya composed Scary Beauty’s music and developed its lyrics based on literary texts, including those by William S Burroughs and Michel Houellebecq.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFkItzIC02g

During the performance, the android – named Alter 3 – will decide on the piece’s tempo, volume and singing expression. Alter 3 will also add its electro-vocals to the mix, singing alongside the musicians. With a mechanical body and a human face and hands, watching the android in motion is rather uncanny and something out of a sci-fi movie as it leads the orchestra with machine-like movements combined with facial expressions.

An early version of the piece was first performed in 2017 by a prototype android. In 2018, Alter 2 made its world premiere in Tokyo at a conference on artificial life. Robot scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who teaches at Osaka University, created Alter 2, which runs on an AI programme by Takashi Ikegami from the University of Tokyo. For the android’s latest iteration Shibuya has worked with Warner Music Japan and mixi, Inc to add software developments to Alter 3.

https://www.thenational.ae/image/policy:1.965329:1579181618/AC16-jan-art-android-opera.JPG?f=default&q=1.0&w=1024&$p$f$q$w=0dcb4bb
Android opera 'Scary Beauty' will come to Sharjah as part of Sharjapan. Kenshu Shintsubo

Scary Beauty is part of Sharjah Art Foundation’s Sharjapan exhibition themed Inter-Resonance: Inter-Organics Japanese Performance and Sound Art. Now in its second year, Sharjapan highlights performance art and sound-based installations from Japan that examine the interactions between nature, technology and human life.

Other performances in Sharjapan’s programme include Locus Focus, an improvised dance presentation by Min Tanaka, who will react and build on his movements based on his surrounding environment. It will take place on Thursday and Friday, January 30 and 31. In Nature’s Rhythm: Heartbeat from Japan on Friday, January 24, Eitetsu Hayashi will demonstrate his innovative drumming technique on traditional Japanese Taiko drums.

The performances are free and open to the public. Details on sharjahart.org

I always thought bots would be more into EDM.

GeneChing
01-22-2020, 08:57 AM
From anime to reality: Mobile 25-ton Gundam robot to be built in Yokohama (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/20/business/gundam-robot-yokohama/#.XihwOvLYo5N)
BY KAZUAKI NAGATA
STAFF WRITER
JAN 20, 2020


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAazgqe0aps

What was once thought limited to the realm of animation is set to become reality in Yokohama this fall when an 18-meter mobile Gundam robot steps into action.

Fans of the iconic anime series will be able to get an up-close look at the 25-ton machine at Gundam Factory Yokohama, a 9,000 sq.-meter facility set to open at Yama****a Pier on Oct. 1 for a year.

Tickets for the facility will go on sale in July, though the price has not been disclosed. Other details remain a mystery, such as the exact movements the robot will be able to perform using its 24 fully functional joints.

Gundam Factory Yokohama will consist of two areas: a 25-meter-tall Gundam-Dock that will serve as its maintenance site, and a two-story building with shops and event space.

On weekends in July and August, the facility will be operating on a pre-opening basis, but the Gundam robot itself won’t debut until October.

Gundam Global Challenge, a project aimed at actually building a mobile Gundam, was launched in 2014 as part of celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the Gundam anime series, which began in 1979.

Creators, engineers and researchers make up the team working on the project, including Yoshiyuki Tomino, director of the TV series “Mobile Suit Gundam,” Pitoyo Hartono, professor at Chukyo University’s School of Engineering, and Seiichi Saito, creative and technical director at Rhizomatiks Co., a Tokyo-based firm that devises interactive digital artwork.

Robotics and engineering firms such as Asratech Corp. and Yaskawa Electric Corp. are also providing support. The project’s budget has not been disclosed.

Since the opening of Gundam Factory Yokohama is timed to coincide with the Olympics and Paralympics, the team said it will promote the facility to foreign media outlets for the games.

Over the years, Gundam titles and products have attracted anime fans around the world.

The mobile Gundam in Yokohama, however, will differ from the 19.7-meter Unicorn Gundam robot erected in 2017 in Tokyo’s Odaiba district. While parts of Unicorn Gundam are functional, its feet stay on the ground.

The first life-sized Gundam statue was installed in Odaiba in 2009 and has become popular with Japanese and foreign tourists alike.

Am I being judgemental or does that spokesman look just like an anime villain?

GeneChing
08-03-2020, 10:37 AM
A 60-Foot Robot Just Took Its First Steps (https://www.iflscience.com/technology/a-60foot-robot-just-took-its-first-steps/)
By Jack Dunhill
28 JUL 2020, 20:02

https://cdn.iflscience.com/images/6030a3e2-e698-5902-bcf4-386e96d2ac99/extra_large-1595962179-the-60-foot-robot-took-its-first-steps-in-port-of-yokohama.jpg

No, you’re not watching Pacific Rim or an insane anime – this is an actual 18-meter (60-foot) robot taking its first steps (at least, sort of).

Designed after the popular Gundam robot from multiple TV series and manga, this is by far the largest robot ever created – and it looks just as awesome as we imagined. The massive robot, currently in construction in Gundam Factory Yokohama, Japan, is seen lifting and lowering its legs in preparation for its debut in October 2020, although that may be postponed due to the ongoing pandemic.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYirnOIzEa4&feature=emb_logo

Watch as the robot lifts its leg for the first time. Credit: Michael Overstreet on YouTube

People in cranes are seen ****zing about the robot, tweaking moving parts as they carry out mechanical testing. This appears to be a preliminary test, with no weight put on the legs. But whilst it may not be ready to fight supervillains just yet, it looks well on its way to full independent walking.

Gundam Factory Yokohoma has been working on the robot since January with the aim of providing the spectacle of a 60-foot, 25-ton walking robot. Popular Mechanics reports the robot will feature articulated fingers, 24 degrees of freedom, and the ability to support its huge weight, adding to Japan’s impressive robotics records.

The robot resides just outside of Tokyo in the Port of Yokohama, where it will stay for a year. It is already a technical marvel, and we're incredibly excited to see it in full operation.

I'm debating whether this is just what we need right now, or exactly the opposite.

GeneChing
08-07-2020, 10:54 AM
https://geekculture.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/life-size-gundam-head-yokohama-blessed-by-priests.jpg

ANIME/COMICSGEEK BITS
Shinto Priests Bless Japan’s Life-Size Gundam Head In Completion Ceremony (https://geekculture.co/shinto-priests-bless-japans-life-size-gundam-head-in-completion-ceremony/)
Fumiko Kudasai August 6, 20203 min read


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUYEZZCUzlA&feature=emb_logo

In a bizarrely elaborate ceremony on 29 June, Shinto priests were brought in to perform rites for Japan’s life-size Gundam before its head was mounted on it. They were seen bowing to the head in order to mark the completion of this monumental achievement. The life-size Gundam also now has a name, RX-78F00 GUNDAM.

https://geekculture.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/life-size-gundam-priests.jpg

The life-size Gundam will be able to do 2 main poses for now with plans for more coming up in the near future. The first pose is reminiscent of the famous “Last Shooting” stance from the 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam TV animation. The second pose is the “∀ Gundam” adapted from Turn A Gundam broadcasted in 1999.

https://geekculture.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/gundam-last-shooting-pose.jpghttps://geekculture.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/gundam-A-pose.jpg

The exterior of the RX-78F00 GUNDAM is made of Fibre-Reinforced Plastic(FRP) and consists of over 200 parts. The original weight of the Gundam was 25 ton, but for the sake of mobility, the weight was reduced by 10 tons. The Gundam has 24 moveable parts, of which 22 are in the body itself and the joints are powered by motors and reducers. 900 cables were used in total.

The Gundam hangar, named Gundam Dock (G Dock) stands at 25m tall, weighs 436 tons, and is a huge facility that consists of 1,851 pieces. The Gundam Carrier supporting the statue boasts a height of 17m and weighs a whopping 160 tons. Moreover, each floor of the Gundam dock was built to allow people to get closer to the statue for every level which they ascend.

https://geekculture.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/life-size-gundam-completed.jpg

The backstory of the RX-78F00 Gundam has also been revealed in the video. Here is a rough translation:


It is believed that the parts of Earth Federation pilot Amuro Ray’s aircraft RX-78-2 GUNDAM launched at UC 0079, which are believed to have been lost in the fierce battle of A Baoa Kuu, were rediscovered in the suburbs of the Earth Federation Forces-related facility “GUNDAM FACTORY YOKOHAMA” of the Far East Asia region. Using the parts, it was reconstructed by engineers from various fields.

It was as if the new GUNDAM was being developed. There are some parts still missing, and no materials related to Minovsky craft have been found. After about two years of research and development, the GUNDAM FACTORY YOKOHAMA finally started a reconstructed MS startup experiment. The staff involved in the study called this aircraft “RX-78F00”.

The meaning of “F00” in the name will be revealed at the time of the official opening. Additionally, the process of making the exterior will be revealed in a special program scheduled for the 14 August 2020.

https://geekculture.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/RX-78F00-Gundam-1144-scale-figure.jpeg

Special advanced sales for the RX-78F00 Gundam 1/144 scale moveable figure priced from 2750 JPY (S$35.68) will start today, 6 August from 1 p.m. We were all excited to see the full-scale Gundam take its first steps but Gundam Factory Yokohama was forced to postpone the October 2020 opening due to the global pandemic. You can still refer to this site (https://en.gundam.info/news/event/news_event_20200120_0012.html) to take a look at the facilities and tours available though!


Fumiko Kudasai
Fumiko is an avid fan of spreading herself too thin and drowning in too many fandoms. She would love to spend all day reading fanfiction at home and crying.

Finally...good news?

GeneChing
11-27-2021, 11:21 PM
Meet the robot that can write poetry and create artworks (https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/27/tech/ai-da-robot-intl-scli-gbr/index.html)
By Hannah Ryan, CNN

Updated 11:24 AM ET, Sat November 27, 2021
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/211127084013-01-ai-da-robot-file-102321-exlarge-169.jpg
Ai-Da went on display at the Great Pyramids of Giza in Cairo, Egypt, on October 23, 2021, as part of an exhibition presented by the organization Art D'Egypte in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism.
(CNN)When people think of artificial intelligence, the images that often come to mind are of the sinister robots that populate the worlds of "The Terminator," "i, Robot," "Westworld," and "Blade Runner." For many years, fiction has told us that AI is often used for evil rather than for good.
But what we may not usually associate with AI is art and poetry -- yet that's exactly what Ai-Da, a highly realistic robot invented by Aidan Meller in Oxford, central England, spends her time creating. Ai-Da is the world's first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist, and on Friday she gave a public performance of poetry that she wrote using her algorithms in celebration of the great Italian poet Dante.
The recital took place at the University of Oxford's renowned Ashmolean Museum as part of an exhibition marking the 700th anniversary of Dante's death. Ai-Da's poem was produced as a response to the poet's epic "Divine Comedy" -- which Ai-Da consumed in its entirety, allowing her to then use her algorithms to take inspiration from Dante's speech patterns, and by using her own data bank of words, create her own work.
Ai-Da's poem was described was "deeply emotive" by Meller and includes the following verse:

"We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives,
Sent out to seek the light; but it never came
A needle and thread would be necessary
For the completion of the picture.
To view the poor creatures, who were in misery,
That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut."

Meller said that Ai-Da's ability to imitate human writing is "so great, if you read it you wouldn't know that it wasn't written by a human" and told CNN that when Ai-Da was reading her poem on Friday evening, "it was easy to forget that you're not dealing with a human being."
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/211127084016-02-ai-da-robot-file-2019-exlarge-169.jpg
Aidan Meller poses with Ai-Da during a launch event for its first solo exhibition in Oxford on June 5, 2019.
"The Ai-Da project was developed to address the debate over the ethics of further developing AI to imitate humans and human behavior," Meller told CNN. "It's finally dawning on us all that technology is having a major impact on all aspects of life and we're seeking to understand just how much this technology can do and what it can teach us about ourselves."
Meller said one key thing he and the team that work with Ai-Da have learned while developing her is that the project hasn't taught them how "human she is -- but it's shown us how robotic we are as humans."
As Ai-Da has learned how to imitate humans based on our behavior, Meller says the project has shown just how habitual human beings are and how we tend to repeat actions, words, and patterns of behavior -- suggesting that it is we, in fact, who are robotic.
"Through Ai-Da and through the use of AI, we can learn more about ourselves than ever before -- Ai-Da allows us to gain a new insight into our own patterns and our own habits, as we see her imitate them right in front of us," Meller told CNN.
Not only can Ai-Da read and write poetry -- she is also capable of creating artworks, too, and made one for the Dante exhibition titled "Eyes Wide Shut" which was crafted in response to an incident in Egypt in October, when Egyptian security forces detained Ai-Da and wanted to remove the cameras in her eyes due to concerns over surveillance and security.
"The incident showed just how much nervousness there is in the world around technology and its advancements," Meller said.
Meller is aware, too, of the concerns over the increasingly advanced development of artificial intelligence and the potential for using algorithms to manipulate populations but he said that "technology on its own is benign -- it's those that control it whose intentions could be morally and ethically questionable."
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/211127084016-03-ai-da-robot-file-2019-exlarge-169.jpg
Ai-Da is capable of creating artworks and poetry, which she does by using her algorithims to imitate human actions.
According to Meller, when it comes to worries about where the future of AI will take us, "the biggest fear we should have should be of ourselves and the human capability to use technology to oppress, not of the AI itself."
Meller thinks that Ai-Da can be a pioneer in the world of AI and that what she produces -- whether it's poetry, artworks or something else -- will push the boundaries of what can be achieved in technology and will allow us to learn more about ourselves than ever before, all through the eyes of a robot.

Ai-Da's poetry doesn't work for me. Does it work for you?

GeneChing
11-27-2021, 11:29 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCVgNDdlH4A

GeneChing
11-30-2021, 05:41 PM
Anyone else think this is a bad idea?


Xenobots, the World's First Living Robots, Are Now Capable of Reproducing: 'This Is Profound' (https://people.com/human-interest/xenobots-worlds-first-living-robots-now-capable-of-reproducing/)
Xenobots have the capacity to reproduce in an "entirely new" way, scientists say — which could prove beneficial in making advancements toward regenerative medicine

By Natasha Dado
November 30, 2021 02:23 PM

https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F20%2F2021%2F11%2F30%2F robots.jpg
CREDIT: SAM KRIEGMAN AND DOUGLAS BLACKISTON
The world's first living robots, known as xenobots, have learned how to self-replicate, according to the scientists who developed them.

Xenobots — which are designed by computers and created by hand from the stem cell of the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis, where its name is derived — were introduced to the world in 2020. At the time, scientists announced the organisms were self-healing and could survive for weeks without food, according to CNN.

Now, experts have found that xenobots — which are blob-like in appearance — have the capacity to reproduce in an "entirely new" way, scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University said Monday in a press release.

Scientists found that the xenobots are able to "gather hundreds" of single cells together and "assemble baby" organisms inside their mouths, which become new and functional xenobots within days, per the press release.

"With the right design—they will spontaneously self-replicate," said Josh Bongard, a computer science professor and robotics expert at the University of Vermont who helped lead the research.

"People have thought for quite a long time that we've worked out all the ways that life can reproduce or replicate. But this is something that's never been observed before," added co-author Douglas Blackiston, Ph.D., a senior scientist at Tufts University and the Wyss Institute.

"This is profound," said Michael Levin, a biology professor and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University. "These cells have the genome of a frog, but, freed from becoming tadpoles, they use their collective intelligence, a plasticity, to do something astounding."

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Although the idea of robots that are able to reproduce on their own may sound frightening, one scientist involved with the research says this does not "keep me awake at night."

"We are working to understand this property: replication. The world and technologies are rapidly changing. It's important, for society as a whole, that we study and understand how this works," Bongard said in the press release, noting that having a better understanding of this kind of self-replicating biotechnology can have many practical uses — including for regenerative medicine.

"If we knew how to tell collections of cells to do what we wanted them to do, ultimately, that's regenerative medicine—that's the solution to traumatic injury, birth defects, cancer, and aging," Bongard added. "All of these different problems are here because we don't know how to predict and control what groups of cells are going to build. Xenobots are a new platform for teaching us."

GeneChing
04-05-2022, 07:50 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scSdbCztNnk

threads
Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you)
covid (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?71666-Coronavirus-(COVID-19)-Wuhan-Pneumonia)

GeneChing
06-16-2022, 09:25 AM
Japanese robot preacher that cost $1 million delivers sermons at Buddhist temple in Kyoto (https://nextshark.com/japanese-buddhist-temple-robot/)
Rebecca Moon
16 hours ago

https://nextshark.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/robot-priest.jpg
Inside of a Buddhist temple in Japan resides a 6-foot-4-inch robot named “Mindar” modeled after the Buddhist goddess of mercy, Kannon, to deliver Buddhist scriptures.
Mindar is the result of a $1-million collaboration between Kodaiji Temple, located in Kyoto and a team led by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University’s Department of System Innovation in 2019.

A camera lens embedded in Mindar’s left eye allows the robot to make eye contact with worshippers, and its hands and torso mimic human-like movement.
Mindar was designed to “encourage people’s imagination” due to its gender- and age-neutral look.
Worshippers at a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, are read sermons and Buddhist scriptures by a robot modeled after the Buddhist goddess of mercy, Kannon.

Inside Kodaiji Temple is a 6-foot-4-inch and 132 pound robot named “Mindar” programmed to deliver a 25-minute sermon on Heart Sutra. Made of silicone skin and aluminum body parts, the robot features a camera embedded in its left eye to allow eye contact with worshippers during sermons and teachings. Mindar’s hands and torso were also designed to replicate human movement and interactions.

Mindar was a $1-million project designed by a team led by Professor Ishiguro Hiroshi of the Department of Systems Innovation at Osaka University and Kodaiji Temple in 2019. The goal of the project was to renew people’s interest in Buddhism, which has been declining due to generational change and modernism in Japan, and to encourage worshippers in using their imagination. Ishiguro explained that Mindar was designed to have an ambiguous gender and age so that worshippers can imagine their own image of Buddha.

The robot also includes interactive 3D projection mapping that allows it to display worshippers onto a wall behind itself. Worshippers in these projected videos ask Mindar questions about Buddha’s teachings, to which it responds with straightforward, articulate answers.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLoF5_-OUKY&feature=emb_imp_woyt

Kodaiji Temple’s chief steward Goto Tensho is hoping to include more advanced features for Mindar as it is currently limited to preprogrammed sermons.

“We plan to implement AI so Mindar can accumulate unlimited knowledge and speak autonomously. We also want to have separate sermons for different age groups to facilitate teachings,” Goto told ABC News.

In regards to concerns that Mindar is violating a religious field, Goto explained that Buddhism is about following Buddha’s way rather than worshiping a god.

“Buddhism isn’t a belief in a God, it’s pursuing Buddha’s path,” Goto told CNN. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s represented by a machine, a piece of scrap metal or a tree.”



Feature Image via The Hindu (right) and DW Shift (left)


Buddhist-robot (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?69454-Buddhist-robot)
Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you (https://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?18982-Which-Colossal-Death-Robot-are-you)

GeneChing
08-09-2022, 09:49 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=32i5BwJjB8c

This is how it begins...:eek:

GeneChing
10-02-2022, 11:29 PM
https://vimeo.com/744608966

GeneChing
11-27-2022, 12:25 PM
SFPD authorized to kill suspects using robots in draft policy (https://missionlocal.org/2022/11/killer-robots-to-be-permitted-under-sfpd-draft-policy/)
“This is not normal. No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.”

by WILL JARRETT
NOVEMBER 22, 2022

https://missionloca.s3.amazonaws.com/mission/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/killerRobots_bannerV2.jpg
A remote-controlled police robot used to disarm bombs. Image from Shutterstock.

A policy proposal heading for Board of Supervisors approval next week would explicitly authorize San Francisco police to kill suspects using robots.

The new policy, which defines how the SFPD is allowed to use its military-style weapons, was put together by the police department. Over the past several weeks, it has been scrutinized by supervisors Aaron Peskin, Rafael Mandelman and Connie Chan, who together comprise the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee.

The draft policy faces criticism from advocates for its language on robot force, as well as for excluding hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not including personnel costs in the price of its weapons.

Peskin, chair of the committee, initially attempted to limit the SFPD’s authority over the department’s robots by inserting the sentence, “Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”

The following week, the police struck out his suggestion with a thick red line.

It was replaced by language that codifies the department’s authority to use lethal force via robots: “Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to SFPD.”

This could mark a legal crossing of the Rubicon for the city: Robot use-of-force has never before been approved, nor has it ever been prohibited, in San Francisco. A version of this draft policy was unanimously accepted by the rules committee last week and will come before the full board on Nov. 29.

“The original policy they submitted was actually silent on whether robots could deploy lethal force,” said Peskin. He added that he decided to approve the SFPD’s caveated guidelines because the department had made the case that “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.”

Advocates and lawyers who oppose the militarization of the police are less convinced.

“We are living in a dystopian future, where we debate whether the police may use robots to execute citizens without a trial, jury, or judge,” said Tifanei Moyer, senior staff attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Moyer leads the organization’s work on police misconduct and militarization.

“This is not normal,” she wrote over email. “No legal professional or ordinary resident should carry on as if it is normal.”

https://missionloca.s3.amazonaws.com/mission/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/killerRobots_banner.jpg
Supervisors Rafael Mandelman, Aaron Peskin, and Connie Chan discuss the new policy. Screenshot via SFGOVTV.

The SFPD has 17 robots in its arsenal, 12 of which it describes as fully functional. According to police spokesperson Officer Robert Rueca, they have never been used to attack anyone. The robots are remote-controlled, and are typically used to investigate and defuse potential bombs or to surveil areas too awkward or dangerous for officers to access.

Uses defined in the new draft policy include “training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant or during suspicious device assessments.”

And, in extreme circumstances, they can be used to kill.

How are robots used lethally?

In 2016, the Dallas police force strapped plastic explosives to a robot and used it to blow up a sharpshooter who had killed five officers, in the first U.S. instance of a police robot killing a suspect. One of the SFPD’s robots, the Remotec F5A, is the same model as the one used by Dallas police.

More recently in Oakland, a policy on lethal robots came before the city’s police department’s civilian oversight council. One device they discussed was the PAN disruptor, a device that can be attached to a remote-controlled robot and uses a blank shotgun shell to disable a bomb by blasting it with pressurized water. Oakland police acknowledged that, in emergencies, they could arm it with live rounds. The SFPD also has multiple PAN disruptors that can be attached to robots and fire shotgun shells.

Last month, Oakland police ultimately backed down and removed language that would have allowed them to kill using robots. They said they hope to pursue the option in the future.

Rueca said that the San Francisco Police Department “does not have any sort of specific plan in place” for how lethal force would be applied with robots as “the unusually dangerous or spontaneous operations where SFPD’s need to deliver deadly force via robot would be a rare and exceptional circumstance.”

continued next post

GeneChing
11-27-2022, 12:25 PM
Why is this happening now?

Cities across California are currently drafting new policies on the use of military weapons by local police forces, thanks to a state law called AB 481, which passed last year. Figuring out the force options of robots is one small part of the law’s remit.

The law mandates that every police force in California must annually report its stock of all military-style weapons, their cost, how they can be used, and how they were deployed in the prior year. The law gives local authorities — in San Francisco’s case, the Board of Supervisors — the ability to annually reject or accept the rules governing how the weapons are used.

The Board will also be required to sign off on any new military-style equipment before purchase, although the police will be able to replace any existing equipment up to a value of $10 million without approval.

https://missionloca.s3.amazonaws.com/mission/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/robotUseOfForce.png
An SFPD bomb squad robot was deployed on Valencia Street in 2019. Photo by Abraham Rodriguez.

Most advocates opposed to the militarization of the police hail AB 481 as a step in the right direction for accountability and transparency. But concerns have been raised that some jurisdictions have not gone far enough in limiting how military-style weapons can be used.

Jennifer Tu, a fellow with the American Friends Service Committee, has been tracking how police departments across the state are implementing AB 481.

“My suspicion is that most policies will have left room for robots to use force,” said Tu. She said that it was her understanding that most departments have not mentioned robots at all, which means they are subject only to generic restrictions.

The ACLU has published advice on the use of robots by police, and notes that the limited situational awareness of robots, compared to in-person officers, make it more likely that force is “used inappropriately and/or on the wrong targets.”

“There is a really big difference between hurting someone right in front of you, and hurting someone via a video screen,” said Tu.

What else is in the draft policy?

Tu contended that, on top of the issue of robot force, there are other problems with San Francisco’s draft policy, as it currently stands.

In its initial submission, the SFPD omitted all of its 608 semi-automatic assault rifles, 64 machine guns, and 15 submachine guns from the new use-of-force policy. According to Peskin, these were added in when he pushed back on their omission. But in the department’s latest version, which is set to come before the supervisors next week, 375 of the semi-automatic assault rifles are missing again.

The rationale given for the removal of these assault rifles from the policy: The Chief of Police defines them as “standard-issue service weapons.”

Others disagree with that assessment. “We don’t see regular officers walking around with assault rifles,” said Allyssa Victory, staff attorney with the criminal justice program at the ACLU of Northern California (and recent Oakland mayoral hopeful). “Just writing a policy doesn’t make it so.”

Victory added that shotguns and handguns can be omitted because they are standard issue, according to AB 481, but no such exemption applies to assault rifles.

“The law defines ‘military weapons,’ not the chief of police,” wrote civil rights lawyer Moyer over email. “San Francisco is not the only department to attempt to redefine ‘military weapons’ so as to justify hiding their use, costs, and upkeep from the public.”

“If the law defined military weapons as bubble gum, then the police department would have to disclose their use of bubble gum,” she wrote.

Tu added, “I really think it is confusing to the public if we don’t have those assault weapons reported.” Their omission would mean that in future annual reports, the police would not need to declare how the guns had been used or who had been injured by them.

Another point of contention with advocates is that the SFPD has not included personnel training or maintenance times in their valuation of the cost of their military-style weapons. This appears to be required by AB 481, which states that costs must include “acquisition, personnel, training, transportation, maintenance, storage, upgrade, and other ongoing costs” of the weapons.

But the SFPD rejected a suggestion from the American Friends Service Committee to include personnel costs. The department said that maintenance and training occur during normal work hours, and that their human resources management system cannot track different types of work done by officers, so “there is no compelling reason to track in the suggested manner.”

It remains to be seen if the policy, as it stands, will be approved by the Board of Supervisors, and what limitations will ultimately be placed on the police department’s military-style weapons, including its robots. And, once the rules are settled, the process will begin again with the Sheriff’s Department, which will need to create its own policy to stay in compliance with AB 481.

“The great news about this thing is that it can be evolved,” said Peskin, adding that policy must be scrutinized and approved every year if the SFPD wants to keep using its weapons.

“And I think we are starting off in a good place.”

This policy will be discussed at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday November 29. The meeting starts at 2 p.m. and the police equipment policy is agenda item 28. More details can be found in the full meeting agenda.

...this is exactly how it starts...:eek:

GeneChing
02-19-2023, 11:50 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=w9a-F_XvHLU

GeneChing
02-20-2023, 11:38 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJA4Rch0biE

GeneChing
04-14-2023, 09:21 AM
Robot hand uses 'skin' to hold chopsticks, balls, and bubble wrap just right (https://news.sky.com/story/robot-hand-uses-skin-to-hold-chopsticks-balls-and-bubble-wrap-just-right-12855092)
University of Cambridge researchers made a 3D-printed hand that looks just as convincing when holding some bubble wrap as it does wielding a chopstick, ready for whatever noodles you throw at it.

By Tom Acres, technology reporter

Wednesday 12 April 2023 01:39, UK

From holding a ball to daintily grasping a chopstick, a new robotic hand developed by scientists in the UK can grab a range of objects just by moving its wrist and the feeling of its "skin".

The 3D-printed appendage is designed to be low-cost and energy-efficient, capable of carrying out complex movements despite not being able to use each finger independently.

Professor Fumiya Iida, of the University of Cambridge's Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory, said the goal was to "simplify the hand as much as possible".

Most advanced robots capable of feats similar to the human hand have fully motorised fingers, making them more difficult and expensive to produce.

But this cheaper alternative has proved remarkably capable across more than 1,200 tests - including knowing how much pressure to apply to a given object.

https://e3.365dm.com/23/04/2048x1152/skynews-robot-hand-cambridge_6118133.jpg?20230411150024
A robotic hand daintily wielding a chopstick. Pic: University of Cambridge

'Robot skin' helps judge needed force

While you should instinctively know to gently handle an egg without shattering it and ruining breakfast, robots will require training to recognise the right amount of force required.

In this case, researchers implanted the hand with sensors so it could sense what it was touching.

It used trial and error to learn what kinds of grip would be successful - starting with balls and then moving on to everything from peaches and bubble wrap to a computer mouse.

Study co-author Dr Thomas George-Thuruthel, now of University College London, said the sensors were "sort of like the robot's skin".

"We can't say exactly what information the robot is getting," he added, "but it can theoretically estimate where the object has been grasped and with how much force."

The robot can also predict whether it was going to drop an object, and adapt accordingly.

Researchers hope the robotic hand could be improved further, such as adding computer vision capabilities and teaching it to exploit its surroundings to grasp a wider range of objects.

The results are reported in the journal Advanced Intelligent Systems. when they can learn on their own, that's how it starts...:eek:

GeneChing
04-17-2023, 08:34 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3gE1a3SDv0

GeneChing
10-04-2023, 05:40 PM
Robotic ‘Super Monster Wolves’ are guarding Japanese towns against bears (https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-wolves-guard-bear/)
First introduced to combat invasive wild boars, experts now believe the robo-wolf could deter wandering black and brown bears.

BY ANDREW PAUL | PUBLISHED OCT 3, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

https://www.popsci.com/uploads/2023/10/03/Screenshot-2023-10-03-at-1.57.29-PM.png?auto=webp&width=1440&height=810
It may not look like a real wolf to you, but it does the trick against boars and bears. WOLF KAMUY

Stories about solar-powered robotic wolves first surfaced back in 2017 after Japanese researchers began testing prototypes to combat wild boars’ devastating encroachment into farmlands. Since then, a company called Wolf Kamuy expanded sales of its sentry products featuring menacing fangs, fur, flashing red LED “eyes,” and a head capable of shaking side-to-side while emitting a 90 decibel howl. But boars aren’t the only problem plaguing rural Japanese communities. According to recent reports, Wolf Kamuy is now offering many of its faux-wolves as bear deterrence.

It turns out the “Super Monster Wolf” isn’t just effective at protecting farmers’ crops—it’s also pretty good at protecting the farmers themselves. As reported October 1 via the BBC, bears are an increasingly difficult, sometimes even deadly nuisance in many areas of Japan thanks to a combination of serious factors, including climate change, deforestation,and urban expansion. What’s more, bear populations in regions such as Hokkaido appear to be actually increasing as Japan faces an aging population and declining birth rates. According to the BBC, some researchers estimate a total of over 22,000 bears located around Hokkaido. Because of all this, the region recorded at least 150 bear attacks over the past six decades—with four fatalities in 2021 alone. Meanwhile, bears continue to wander into more crowded towns and cities bordering wildlife areas.

Enter: the Super Monster Wolf. By installing the guard bots in urban locales, experts hope to deter bears from wandering into populated areas to potentially harm both humans and themselves. Researchers previously estimated that a robo-wolf’s howls effectively deterred bears from encroaching within approximately 1-square-km (about 0.38 square mi) of its installation—arguably better than many electric fence perimeters. With strategic placement, Super Monster Wolves could help elderly communities, and protect the bears.

Of course, humanity cannot solely rely on an army of robot wolves to protect us from bear attacks. Bears (not to mention countless other species) face immense existential threats in the face of ongoing climate change calamities, and it’s not the bears’ fault they are increasingly desperate to find food sources. The best remedy, therefore, is to continue focusing on climate solutions like conservation, renewable energy, and sustainable urban planning, rather than stopgaps like the (admittedly rad) Super Monster Wolf.


Andrew Paul
Andrew Paul is Popular Science's staff writer covering tech news. Previously, he was a regular contributor to The A.V. Club and Input, and has had recent work also featured by Rolling Stone, Fangoria, GQ, Slate, NBC, as well as McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He lives outside Indianapolis.
Looks like a freakin kaiju. :eek:

GeneChing
10-06-2023, 08:57 AM
3.5 TONS OF FUN —
Archax is a $2.7 million pilotable robot for the ultra-wealthy (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/you-can-pilot-your-own-15-foot-tall-mecha-robot-for-2-7-million/#:~:text=The%20Archax%20can%20be%20used,needed%20t o%20command%20the%20mecha.)
Japanese startup Tsubame has 5 units up for preorder.

SCHARON HARDING - 10/4/2023, 12:25 PM
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/inside-1440x810.jpg

Robots are already cleaning our homes and patrolling our cities. Now, they're ready to embody our favorite mecha-themed science fiction indulgences—if you have 400 million yen (about $2.7 million) to splurge.

Tsubame Industries, a Tokyo-based startup, currently has five Archax units, a pilotable robot, available for preorder, as reported by Reuters this week. Tsubame unveiled the robot this summer and plans to demo the robot at the Japan Mobility Show from October 26 through November 5. Tsubame won't just have a giant robot on display; the robot will demonstrate movement of its upper body and arms, according to a Google translation of an August report from Japanese publication Robot Start.

Built with human-like proportions, Archax has moving rear legs and front legs and uses front-wheel steering. It also has a movable head (left and right), waist (left and right), shoulders (up and down), elbows, wrists, and fingers.

Wherever Archax is displayed or stored needs a lot of headroom. The robot is 14.8 feet (4.5 m) tall. It also weighs a monstrous 3.5 tons, and Archax's frame contains iron pipes, aluminum alloy, and steel plates. The frame is covered in reinforced fiber plastic and ASA 3D-printing filament.

Robot or mecha suit

The Archax can be used like a robot, where you control the arms, fingers, and other movable parts remotely. Controlling a 3.5-ton machine is no small feat; one of Archax's modes puts the owner inside the robot's chest, where a cockpit holds all the controls needed to command the mecha.

In vehicle mode, Archax can move up to 6.2 miles (10 km) per hour, Tsubame claims. The robot will widen its stance slightly for added stability and appear hunched.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/hunch.jpg
Here you can see Archax hunched.
Tsubame
Inside the cockpit, you'll find two joysticks, two pedals, and four displays—connected to the robot's nine cameras—to help you navigate. The screens are also supposed to display information helpful for controlling the machine, like the angle at which it's tilted, the speed at which it's traveling, and how much power the 300 V DC battery has left. And there's a touchscreen for going from vehicle mode to robot mode.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/inside-1-640x480.jpgThe robot's nine cameras can be rearranged to provide a different view.
Tsubame
Safety considerations include an emergency stop button, having the robot stop automatically if its main body is tilted more than 5 degrees, and an emergency escape hatch by the cockpit's rear. The robot was also reportedly tested by various safety standards organizations, such as The International Electrotechnical Commission, the International Organization for Standardization, and Japanese Industrial Standards.

From science fiction to reality

Archax gets its name from the Archaeopteryx, a "bird-like dinosaur" sometimes referred to as the first bird (although it's now believed there could be earlier bird ancestors), per the National History Museum.

"Japan is very good at animation, games, robots, and automobiles, so I thought it would be great if I could create a product that compressed all these elements into one," Ryo Yoshida, Tsubame's CEO, said, per Reuters.

Since its reveal, people have been comparing Archax to the Gundam franchise. It's not just because of the robot's pilotable nature—Tsubame's CTO, Hironori Ishii, helped direct the life-size Gundam attraction currently displayed in Yokohama, Japan, as Anime News Network noted in August.

Currently, Tsubame is focused on entertainment applications for its bot, but Yoshida said Archax could one day be used for space development, disaster recovery, and other uses.

Tsubame, which has nine employees, can't yet mass produce this gargantuan, costly product, so it's targeting the ultra-wealthy, like those who buy supercars, company representatives said, per Anime News Network. Archax even uses car paint for a metallic texture, according to Tsubame.

Tsubame is currently accepting preorders for the robot in Japan, but would-be buyers will have to wait more than a year after placing an order to receive the extravagant new toy. The long wait time and the robots' "preorder" status, however, leave some room for skepticism around the product's delivery.

If you don't have the patience or, more realistically, $2.7 million for such a thing, you can check out Archax via video instead:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1iUB7F9wpc
Archax robot.
Listing image by Robot Start/YouTube


SCHARON HARDING
Scharon is Ars Technica’s Senior Product Reviewer writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer technology, including laptops, mechanical keyboards, and monitors. She’s based in Brooklyn.
I'm guessing no one that reads this forum is 'ultra rich'...:rolleyes:

GeneChing
01-16-2024, 10:27 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ep5EI4ivY