A robotics designer named David Hanson, who lives in Dallas, Texas, says yes, according to this story from the Associated Press. But can you imagine that this guy gave his latest robot, designed to resemble his girlfriend, a name like Hertz? Does he think his girlfriend is for rent? Quite amazing! Many people disagree with his approach.
Before going further, here is what Hertz looks like in its current development (Photo: Tony Gutierrez, AP)
Besides choosing such a name, why is this such a controversial idea to make robots looking very much like human beings?
First described by pioneering Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, the [Uncanny Valley] theory goes like this: humans have a positive psychological reaction to robots that look somewhat like humans. But if a robot is made to look very realistic but somehow isn't quite right (it has an odd smile, or it doesn't blink, for example) it seems grotesque instead of comforting.
"Our experience has shown that people quickly lose the suspension of disbelief needed to interact with these creations once they start interacting with them for any length of time, because the artificial intelligence is not capable of producing human-level behavior," said Reid Simmons, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. "I strongly believe that this problem would be exacerbated by having a more humanly realistic robot."
As you can imagine, Hanson disagrees.
"Most people doing social robots believe that human faces will turn people off and will disturb them. I think that's ridiculous," Hanson said. "The human face is perhaps the most natural paradigm for us to interact with."
Anyway, Hertz is just an ungoing project without much substance right now.
For now, Hertz is a face mounted to a wooden stool, its disembodied brain a laptop computer. It has no arms, legs or body, although Hanson is planning those enhancements someday.
Hertz's eyes have video cameras, enabling it to gaze at a human face and follow you around, provided you don't move too quickly or beyond its limited field of vision. That and the limited speech skills are the extent of Hertz's abilities.
And if this AP story is true, I'm not sure his girlfriend will stay with him for long.
Most of the work on Hertz was done in his apartment and funded mostly with student loans. Last summer, Hanson formed a company, Human Emulation Robotics, with the hopes of raising venture capital.
"This is like a first step," he said. "This looks like a monster because it is a severed head. But once you get used to it, it's not. I haven't proven that it's not disturbing yet, but I have shown that it is captivating."
I think this guy might be sued by the Hertz Corporation even before his girlfriend dumps him. What a life!
Source: Matt Slagle, Associated Press, February 2, 2004
7:41:31 PM
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