Veronica Portas

CS 312

Actroid

Robots that are acquiring human characteristics seem to have been a main focus of developers since long ago. The Actroid is a reception robot that looks human and even sounds human. In Star Trek the crew had to learn how to interact with Data (the android) just like now humans are learning to interact with robots.

Actroid was developed by Koroko Co. Ltd and Advance Media Inc. She can speak four different languages and “can carry on conversations with the visitors on various subjects including information in the relevant language in a synthetic but true-to-life voice, “(Suzuki Kiyoyuki) She is also able to have facial expressions, lip movement and behaviors while talking to visitors. She uses AmiVoice for speech recognition. AmiVoice has the ability to understand different languages and also has noise cancellation technology, so distant noises will not confuse it. Actroid was set up at information centers of the World Expo.

The best way for a human to interact with a robot is if it has characteristics that we are used to, like the Aibo. Sony’s robot dog, has puppy like characteristics and after awhile you stop seeing it as a robot. Actroid has the same idea behind it. Even though people know it’s not real after awhile they stop realizing it’s really just a robot. Although all of this is good when dealing with humans, I think sometimes robots have to be “ugly” and not have human characteristics so it can get a job done better, like Asimo which was created by Honda and looks like a scary space man, this android can walk unlike the very human-like looking Actroid.

Source

http://www.kokoro-dreams.co.jp/ng/actroid/pdf/press_english.pdf