8/04/2010

What the Hell is a Telenoid?

It is an armless, legless creature created by Osaka University and Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). The Telenoids purpose is to communicate facial expressions of whoever their linked to over the internet, to old people in Japan. Having already created robot clones, and other androids created to portray actual people (with their Geminoid F and HI-1 respectively). Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro has done it again, creating a new portable tele-operated robot, that can effectively transfer a persons presence. This guy won't stop until we are all replaced by mechanical monsters from the darkest regions of human imagination. Telenoid users can interact with people at a distance through a computer, the system tracks the user's face and head motion and captures his/her voice. The motions and voice are relayed to Telenoid, which expresses them while interacting with some old person. It's meant to appear neither male nor female, young nor old. It has an "abbreviated" torso and arms, but can wiggle around to a limited extent while on its stand.Which makes it look like some weird sperm creature on a guitar stand. Osaka software firm Eager plans to start distributing Telenoid later this year priced around $35,000 for the research version and about $8,000 for a commercial version. What it really reminds me of is the creepy baby from Eraser Head.  

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