Sweet merciful fates: this is a robot. Called a Geminoid, these things came into fame with an early version in 2005 by Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro of ATR. This new version seems completely revamped and updated and, more interesting, this is the first Geminoid from outside of Japan.
This new Geminoid comes from Aalborg University in Denmark and is considerably less complex – but much more realistic – than Ishiguro’s original model. This one, called Geminoid-DK, appears to really breathe and perform involuntary muscular reactions.
In the spring of 2010, a new geminoid was created. The new robot, Geminoid-F was a simpler version of the original HI-1, and it was also more affordable, making it reasonable to acquire one for humanistic research in Human Robot Interaction.
Geminoid|DK will be the first of its kind outside of Japan, and is intended to advance android science and philosophy, in seeking answers to fundamental questions, many of which that have also occupied the Japanese researchers. The most important questions are:
– What is a human?
– What is presence?
– What is a relation?
– What is identity?