The Telenoid R1 telepresence robot is intended to present a less well-defined robotic presence; the personality of the user (male or female) could dominate, rather than the characteristics of the robot. At least that's the theory.
Teleoperated android robots in the past, such as Geminoid™ HI-1 (developed by ATR) and Geminoid™ F (developed by Osaka Univ. and ATR) owned appearances similar to actual persons, and were intended to transfer presences of actual persons. The new Telenoid R1 was designed to appear and to behave as a minimalistic human; at the very first glance, one can easily recognize the Telenoid as a human while the Telenoid appear as both male and female, as both old and young. By this minimal design, the Telenoid allows people to feel as if an acquaintance in the distance is next to you.
The term Telenoid is a new term coined from a prefix Tele-, as Telephone and Teleoperation, and the Latin postfix -oides which indicates similarity, as Humanoid. Using Telenoids, we will investigate the essential elements for representing and transferring humanlike presence. In practical usage, we expect Telenoid to be used as a new communication media
In practice, though, the Telenoid R1 seems to be a perfect way to project a creepy telepresence, as opposed to a business-like presence. What do you think? Take a look at this video to make up your mind.
(Telenoid video)
Although Philip K. Dick was talking about machines evolving on their own, I was still reminded of the Second Variety robots who tricked you into taking them into your bunker: "It makes me wonder if we're not seeing the beginning of a new species. The new species. Evolution. The race to come after man."
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