Robot Actress Makes Stage Debut In Japan 140
Robotron23 writes "The BBC reports that a robot named Geminoid-F has made its acting debut (video) in Japan. The short play in which it appeared was a sellout with the Japanese public, who were curious to see the robot's performance. However an actress who co-starred pointed out that the lack of human presence made the droid difficult to act alongside."
Acting skills (Score:4, Funny)
Oh Yeah! Japanese robot porn!
RULE 34!
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Oh come on. That's not even Rule 34 worthy - that's just "Japan".
Rule 34 would be taking 5 or 6 of these things, making them have a massive orgy inside an F-22 Bomb-bay only to climax and spew battery acid all over the citizens of some city which inadvertantly destroys all their clothes which gets everyone horny and breaks out into an even bigger orgy.
And if that's not a rule 34 - then it's a Rule 35.
Doing "NakedNews" can be, uh, interesting... (Score:2)
The "skin" on the robot can be virtually anything so...
How 'bout giving the "actress du jour" some extra publicity?
It could be colored (and multi-colored at that,) a nice Navii blue.
In fact, it could be giving war news from the war zone. "She done blowed up real good!"
Why use a human being at all?
We could get our financial news from "Goofy©(TM)®", describing the Wall street latest melt down that has just wiped out your life's savings.
How about "Donald Duck©(TM)®" giving us the political
Pixellated pussy? (Score:2)
large boobs is an American thing, which is really silly for the rest of the world.
Japanese porn, OTOH, is characterized by bound girls and pixellated genitalia [platinumfetish.com].
Shouldn't be too difficult, the robot is operated by wires, anyhow.
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But they also have immense amounts of:
The correct conclusion is not so much that America's big breasteses have world-wide appeal, as that the Japanese have hella fetishes.
And so it began... All My Circuits (Score:5, Funny)
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Future is here (Score:1)
So when will we be able to have Calculon?
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Scary (Score:4, Insightful)
The Uncanny Valley Effect [wikipedia.org] is strong with this one.
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Seriously! Just look at that thing's primary manipulation appendage at about 0:22 to 0:25 - the wrist is completely wrong, the hand is not the hand of a thing that has ever lived. It's just plain horrifying.
Faces are one thing, and a lot of researchers have focused on getting those really good, so as long as the thing isn't moving it's actually passable. Hands, however, seem to currently be completely unreproducible. (even in games! Most NPCs have what seem to be sticky blobs with tendrils on the ends of th
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Buddy why do you fixate on the hands so much? For me though, I find their blinking crappy. It's not so hard to make a 1/500s blink with a servo is it?? Camera shutters do it all the time why can't they make the blinks more natural?
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I thought it looked like it was blinking intentionally slow. I would not be surprised if it had bedroom eyes on purpose.
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Well, I guess it will attract lots of cats then.
But anyhow, I'm perplexed to read through 70+ comments here, and not find a single reference to Idoru.
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In animation each bone typically has 6 degrees of freedom so it is no problem to copy any hand movement. Doing the same with servos in robots at a
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Faces are one thing, and a lot of researchers have focused on getting those really good, so as long as the thing isn't moving it's actually passable. Hands, however, seem to currently be completely unreproducible.
Which is is puzzling to me. I would think a lot more research would be done on useable, lifelike robotic hands for amputees.
Get the hook! (Score:2)
Seriously dude, do you think doctors are the kind of people who give a shit about somebody's hands? Amputees are lucky to get the hooks. (But you shouldn't wonder about the "incredibly lifelike dildos" and the "Fleshlight"!)
Not The First (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the first robot actor ever was Keanu Reeves.
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No way Bells is bigger than Waimea brah.
Actually, (Score:3, Informative)
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mate...Rossum's were humans acting like robots acting like humans,,,,,Keanu is a human trying to act like a human!
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Surely you mean Steven Seagal?
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No, it was Chuck Nor@^$
@
no carrier
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Actually, the first robot actor ever was Keanu Reeves.
David Duchovney. [comedycentral.com]
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What about Robert Picardo [wikipedia.org] and Brent Spiner [wikipedia.org]?
Oh wait, they just play robots. The FA video won't play on this computer, but I bet it looks more human than Picardo did as Johnnycab.
What the director said (Score:1)
The director said that this was the future of theater. You could have robots acting the way you envision it, without having to care with all the problems human actors tend to bring with him.
I saw it on the Japanese TV last night. My opinion is that if he doesn't like directing actors, he should look for another job.
Re:What the director said (Score:4, Interesting)
if the bot's performance is the sum total of the director's intent, they will suck.
directors prefer certain actors over others because of what they bring and how they interpret the material.
a director that is under the illusion of having complete control is a nightmare to work with, and they produce crap. ...that said, this robot's giving better performances than some i've seen.
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if the bot's performance is the sum total of the director's intent, they will suck.
directors prefer certain actors over others because of what they bring and how they interpret the material.
a director that is under the illusion of having complete control is a nightmare to work with, and they produce crap. ...that said, this robot's giving better performances than some i've seen.
Playing devil's advocate for a minute... what if the crap from control-freak directors happens only because they are attempting the impossible task of executing their vision through a human actor? What if you had a director with a complete and vivid image for how he wanted a role played, down to the last detail, and the technological wherewithal to implement that vision without needing to harangue a human actor into doing it for him? If you beat the uncanny valley, maybe it wouldn't suck. In fact, the creat
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I bet he would love to work with CNC mills.
Is he Haley Mills' brother? (Score:2)
Sorry I couldn't resist.
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I have. In fact there was a line in that story that carries with me till today. The technician talking with teh actor in the projection room. The actor asks, "what happens when they make a black box to replace you". The tech replied, "I'd learn to make the black box."
Robots replacing actors, programs replacing programmers...the key is trying to look down the road and see what is coming so you can learn to "make the black box", the next change. Like any good/great Scifi, that book changed my view for a
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Assuming it actually COULD act on it's own, and believably so, it still wouldn't replace human actors untill interfacing with it becomes more intuitive than simply yelling "I NEED MORE EMOTIONS!" at a real actor, who can actually, like, understand language, and has half a clue what these "emotions" even are.
The fact that the real actor states that it feels like bein
robot or puppet or android or automaton? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Curious future effect, with cultural differences? (Score:2)
In Japan there is apparently no Ship of Theseus-like paradox (at least if Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams is to be believed; not sure what appearance of said paradox in Ghost in the Shell might mean) - the essence of given object is quite firmly not related to materials from which it is (currently...) composed.
I wonder if such "robots" can/will be viewed by as the birth of "androids" - if some were to be constantly worked on, that is.
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GITS is carped bombed with references to western philosophy. I suspect it is much in the same way as how often a katana shows up in a hollywood action (in the hands of a aryan war god(dess) no less).
It would probably do a great job (Score:2)
Elephant in the room (Score:4, Interesting)
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Japan's population is aging and getting smaller. From Japan's point of view, it makes sense to augment society's ability to cope with the increased workload by developing robots capable of doing a lot of the work.
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:5, Informative)
The natural response to that would be to allow more foreign workers in, but Japan have a very long history of xenophobia. I recall reading about someone that would avoid mentioning what part of the city he lived in, as it used to be the a Korean district in feudal times and still carried a social stigma.
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It seems like for whatever reason, Japan doesn't trust foreigners to respect its traditions. In doing so, they completely disrespect the foreigners without giving them a chance. It's nearly a no-win situation with the only viable solution being to maintain a work visa for long enough to marry someone Japanese (and then wait some more) or just wait it out long enough to be granted citizenship (often 10 years or more).
Even this won't often stop the prejudice like "No Foreigner" shops and restaurants, or exten
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It seems like for whatever reason, Japan doesn't trust foreigners to respect its traditions. In doing so, they completely disrespect the foreigners without giving them a chance.
My understanding of most foreign cultures is flawed, as the subset of most cultures I'm familiar with is restricted to "those who visit Disney World" where I worked for five years. But the Japanese I met in Florida seemed to have absolutely no respect whatever for our culture or traditions, and were without exeption the rudest people
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From Japan's point of view, it makes sense to augment society's ability to cope with the increased workload by developing robots capable of doing a lot of the work.
Capable androids require NLP. Maybe a car analogy might help you: they're trying to invent an automobile by designing windshields and dashboards, instead of developing a working engine.
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A better analogy would be that they are trying to build cars using steam engines. The core technology isn't quite there yet, but there's not much that chassis developers can do to speed that up. In the meanwhile, they'll try things out and maybe they'll find some use for what they do come up with (if we put these steam cars on rails...) and maybe they'll come up with some useful stuff that speeds up development when the core technology matures (we need better lubrication than tallow for all these mechanical
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the AI field of Natural Language Processing is being glossed over
If you created the perfect female sex robot and taught it to argue with you, what's the point?
Futuristic Sex Robotz - Hotel Coral Essex (Score:2)
"Welcome To The Internet" just came flowing into my earphones.
How apropos.
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If you watch further (and maybe understand some of what the director is saying) the android *IS* voice controlled.
There is plenty of work in Japan going toward speech processing both inbound and outbound. Vocaloid was an accidental discovery while trying to synthesize realistic human voice for an android.
Japan has a problem getting its next generations to take care of the previous aging generations that need assistance, so they are turning to robots to take over this niche. There are actually many domestic
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I don't understand why Japan is so obsessed with creating androids, while (arguably) the most essential technology behind enabling interaction with humans; the AI field of Natural Language Processing is being glossed over
Because we're doing all of that stuff. Look at the turing test, westerners love it!
A large part of our communication is in body language. They're just focusing on making that possible from the robots perspective when we get around to it.
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These are projects run by single dudes, that's enough to take an animatronic puppet, add a bit of programming and sell it as a robot but it's not enough to research properly difficult subjects like AI. Also it gets you in the news when your bot looks like a human, people got bored of AI advances in toy robots long ago and most laymen don't understand the difficulties the researchers have overcome.
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Yes, Japan and China have societies where conformity is valued more than individuality. Quite a poignant observation you made about the punk rockers; this aspect even affects sub-cultures supposedly all about individuality.
Leaping from there to the square on your 'Jump to Conclusions' mat labeled "they fear trust and love" is hilarious in that insulting-but-okay-because-its-so-retarded way.
Good show. I look forward to future performances.
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Of course I've seen the behavior you speak of. Your conclusion remains a completely unsupported and completely retarded leap of faith. If you have seen this behavior and come to the conclusion that they -- because of genetics and society -- "fear trust and love" it's because you see only what you want to see and while you may have 'spent a lot of time' with these people, you haven't actually met them as people.
So, your performance is only increasing. I can't wait to hear your insistence that your viewpoi
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Of course I've seen the behavior you speak of. Your conclusion remains a completely unsupported and completely retarded leap of faith. If you have seen this behavior and come to the conclusion that they -- because of genetics and society -- "fear trust and love" it's because you see only what you want to see and while you may have 'spent a lot of time' with these people, you haven't actually met them as people.
That feeling you're working from right now is called, "Alarmed Denial". The things I'm saying aren't allowed to be true because of what they imply and how that would damage your world view and your accompanying emotional state.
The logic is simple: Love and trust open one to attack in the group behavior you say that you have seen for yourself. The people we're talking about adopt behaviors which demonstrate avoidance and a shutting down of love and trust in order to avoid those attacks. This is entirely ba
Is it Monique? (Score:2)
Maybe she should star in yet another remake of the Stepford wives, only this time it is valuable robots being replaced by humans.
"Android", not "Robot" (Score:1)
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Looks like we just found "that guy".
Missed It By That Much (Score:2)
I was going to comment that she surely was the first robot stage actor, but wiki tells me Keanu played Mercutio in high school.
A robot that can act? that is old news. (Score:1)
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Yes... they've invented a robot who can do the White Girl Shuffle. Call me when they have a robot who can do everything the background dancers were.
Why bother with a robot... (Score:2)
... when you can already attend concerts with a singing and dancing virtual pop star [slashdot.org] that is only about half as creepy?
She's programmed to be... (Score:1)
Flash sucks... (Score:2)
Combine a flash video with a busy site and that's what you get. Why can't they just put a link to a mpeg file and let the browser use the normal video player?
Anyhow, the BBC being slashdotted seems a bit too much for me. If they want real time video they should first make sure that their servers can send out the bits at whatever rate is required.
Animatroinc (Score:2)
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OK, so it's Westworld rather Terminator. I'm still scared.
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True. This thing is only capable of doing its one task (read script of facial/body movements and voice). The title might as well read, "Repurposed cash register with fancy face plate makes Stage Debut in Japan". Now if it can read the actions of other actors and deliver its lines based on their reactions, that is something completely different.
Why is that Japanese robot cacasion? (Score:2)
Can someone explain the obsession that the Japanese have with white people? It's like some form of self-inflicted racism or something. I don't get it.
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First and foremost... by "cacasion" assume you meant "Caucasian", because using the root of "caca" that would be implying you think that robot looked like shit. (I mean this in the most humorous/friendly of ways haha)
Secondly, if you want to know, certain studies [arstechnica.com] have shown that it is easier to recognize people that share (your) same race. It is not racism, it is art...if you were surrounded by people that were purple for most of your life, you'd likely model a purple robot with purple skin and purplish f
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He's actually asking why the 'robot' (or android, or animatronic monster, or what-have-you) was made to look Caucasian, and not Japanese.
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There's a weird idolization of white people in the Japanese culture that I've noticed among friends from that country. As a culture, they try to emulate whatever's better than them, and for some reason, dropping an atomic bomb on them convinced them that western culture was better.
That said, I do know Japanese people who do have that skin complexion, and the eyes are ambiguous, so there's nothing to say that the robot is supposed to be caucasian at all. It could simply be modeled after a Japanese person who
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He's actually asking why the 'robot' (or android, or animatronic monster, or what-have-you) was made to look Caucasian, and not Japanese.
That makes sense...
But to me it would seem Japanese if it weren't for the hair, so now I am seeing this in a new light also...
...I wonder if this was done for some sort of marketing appeal?
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It could be a commercial thing. Japan exports a lot of electronics and most it is aimed at westerners. It wouldn't pay for the robot to be designed to look Asian, even though its just a skin they stick on to the outside.
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Same reason all anime characters are Caucasion -- They aren't, you're just insular and programmed to recognize things of your own race. They actually much more closely match the traits of the Japanese, but because they don't match your own stereotypes of the Japanese very well (lemme guess, #1 thing you're looking for is they eyes, as opposed to say nose and jawline), they look more like white people to you. So it's not self-inflicted racism and an an obsession with white people on the part of the Japanes
Actroid F (Score:2)
It's a fancy puppet (Score:2)
This is Jim Henson's muppets on steroids. It's an advanced and complex machine to be sure, but it doesn't do anything on its own. As the article shows/says, it is controlled by a person remotely. I fail to see the difference between this and any other puppet. There are robots that are programmed to respond to its environment, but this doesn't seem to be one of them. I don't think it's fair to characterize this as a "robot actor" until it can act. Wakamaru is a better actor.
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Well, Kermit has more charisma and looks less creepy.
Why hold the poor robot to a higher standard than a human?
Not very talented (Score:2)
There are actors who've acted quite successfully alongside empty spaces - where the other character(s) will be added in later either manually or by CGI. They have to imagine the reactions.
Perhaps she's just not very talented?
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Or perhaps it wasn't easy for those actors as well.
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Acting alongside an empty space is a *lot* easier than acting alongside a robot that isn't actually looking at you, but rather through you. You can imagine something in the empty space and play against it, but when there's actually something in that spot that you're supposed to play against, it's nearly impossible to set up a proper dynamic when it isn't playing against you.
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Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman both pointed out the difficulty of acting vs a green screen for the Star Wars prequels, and they certainly aren't the only ones.
So maybe they're just not very talented, or it actually is difficult.
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Well if they can do it (and I mentioned above that some can do it) they're clearly more talented than someone who complains that they can't, you fuckwad.
Seen better robots at Disney World (Score:4, Interesting)
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None of them are truly bipedal AND look humanoid with everything down to facial expressions, and any bipedal robot is unstable at best. I can imagine it would be far worse to have a walking robot fall over and not get up than it would be to have it just remain seated.
I'm pretty sure the cables are just power, audio, and pneumatic air to drive the movement actuators.
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20 years ago, ever been to the hall of presidents? they are not that less conviencing and that is 1960's "robot" tech
speaking of which how is this the first? 50 years of animatronics anyone?
Missed it by 46 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
I attended this "play" (Score:4, Interesting)
There were a few hushed gasps when she snagged her blouse and revealed her arms were, in fact, two "Goal Keeper" Gatling guns, but apart from that, it was an enjoyable display of technology meets art.
#$!^@# commercial (Score:1)
The video link produced a commercial. I don't watch video commercials on the Internet...in fact I don't watch many commercials on TV either. Hence I wasn't able to see the robot.
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Chucky Cheese (Score:1)
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What are you, fifteen?
Yes. That's exactly what I am. I am fifteen.
I suppose it shouldn't come as any surprise that even a mere adolescent can have a more solid and cogent understanding of reality than the average myopic self-centered fart.
-FL
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It's not that big a surprise, but it's even less of a surprise that an adolescent would have convinced themselves that they have a superior understanding.
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It's not that big a surprise, but it's even less of a surprise that an adolescent would have convinced themselves that they have a superior understanding.
It doesn't take that much work to convince oneself of having a superior understanding. Any fool can do that, as the original poster neatly demonstrated. What DOES take work is being right; that requires transcending a bunch of automatic behaviors including selfishness and other fear-based emotions. I've never met a self-styled conservative who could counter even the most basic points I presented. (The bank question being at the top of that list). So they reduce themselves to ad hom bullshit and other s
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I would never argue with a fifteen year old who can use the word "cogent".
So you'd only argue with somebody who isn't capable of arguing back?
Careful; that's exactly how stupid ideas as evidenced in the OP's comments sprout wings and take flight into the winds of fancy. If you can't hold your own in a written debate, it probably means your ideas are junk.
-FL