Creepy Geminoid Robot Can Have a Conversation With You
The Geminoid android is probably best known for being the uncanny doppelganger of its creator Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University, but up until now, the robot has been primarily a telepresence demonstration. On Sunday at South by Southwest Interactive, Geminoid carried on a free-flowing conversation.
It was amazing and a little scary.
Geminoid has been featured in endless Web videos and on TV, but it has never carried on conversations without Dr. Ishiguro pulling the strings in the background, usually from behind an Internet-connected PC. For this demonstration, Dr. Ishiguro stood to one side on the stage as Courtney Ray Goodson carried on a brief, seemingly casual conversation with Geminoid.
Goodson, who is an actress and comedian, later told me that she spent about 8 hours voice-training Geminoid and then another few hours right before Dr. Ishiguro’s presentation conversing with the robot to help it better recognize her voice.
The new voice recognition and communication capabilities come via a partnership with Japan’s NTT, which provided, among other things, a powerful, table top microphone array, speech recognition with deep learning capabilities and an open domain conversational system.
Dr. Ishiguro’s life-like robot double shows off its brand new conversational system. #SXSW #MashSXSW pic.twitter.com/FgshpLURBl
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) March 13, 2016
For all of Geminoid’s new-found capabilities, the robot is still a rather fragile mix of complex technologies. When the robot travels, it does so in three pieces: the legs, the torso and the head. The head is so fragile that Ishiguro never checks it during air travel. Instead it gets carried and has to go through security. Fortunately, explained Dr. Ishiguro, the robot is so well known, that Geminoid robot head in a bag never gets stopped.
A future together
If you think Geminoid is Dr. Ishiguro’s strangest robot, then you haven’t seen the Telenoid. The latest edition has a baby head, fin-like arms and a butt-only bottom. On stage, it blinked and looked around. Its development led to the creation of Hugvie, a fabric-covered robot that looks quite huggable. Apparently it’s popular with Japan’s elderly, mainly because of its neutral appearance, according to Dr. Ishiguro. Next to it were a pair of relatively tiny robots that, unlike their android counterparts, were rather cute. Goodson took the stage again and carried on a conversation with the robots.
Not all taking robots are scary. These little guys are kind of cute. #SXSW #MashSXSW pic.twitter.com/ULwhiDYfLB
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) March 13, 2016
Dr. Ishiguro’s larger point is that, in the not too distant future, we’ll live in a robot society, “Robots will be our partners,” he said.
The professor has actually created a whole legion of very human-looking robots for everything from retail clerks to office workers and even TV hosts. While most are teleoperated, Dr. Ishiguro is experimenting with direct mind-control.
In a final video demonstration, Dr. Ishiguro showed off his most advanced female robot which carried on an entertaining conversation with someone who did not want it as a teacher.
When you offend a robot… #SXSW #MashSXSW pic.twitter.com/BNGH3DgGbv
— Lance Ulanoff (@LanceUlanoff) March 13, 2016
Dr. Ishiguro, who promises to develop more human-friendly robots, contends that humans actually interact better and are more accepting of robots that look like us. Considering the high creepiness factor of some of Dr. Ishiguro’s Android, that point remains to be seen.