We, Robots: KOBIE and RABIE
A picture of KOBIE
A picture of RABIE
Isaac Asimov pictured robots (a term which he, himself, coined) in the far future to be so humanlike, they could even develop emotions. In the past, there have been many speculations on when robotics would achieve the seemingly believable fantasy science fiction has been portraying robots to be since time immemorial. I can’t count the number of Hollywood movies which showed robots to feel acutely as humans do: I Robot, Bicentennial Man, Star Wars, etcetera. In reality, we’re still at the stage of discovering the potential of robotics (of course, that’s discounting what robotics researchers are not telling people). However, the time of robots with emotions might not be as far off as we had imagined.
Enter KOBIE and RABIE — the two robots from Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute or ETRI. Both KOBIE and RABIE are robots which could express seven different types of emotions including happiness, sadness and surprise among others. The two robots have been launched by ETRI under the Active URC Server Framework Project.
KOBIE is an adorable little koala robot. KOBIE’s core technology was developed and based on the H/W module, which is basically a low-cost technology. KOBIE was designed to be a cuddly plaything for people with needs for any type of psychological comfort. KOBIE is armed with sensors so it could recognize touch and express appropriate emotions. On the other hand, RABIE was made to interact with children and be a plaything of sorts, like a network robot. Its big eyes are used as screens to display emoticons and it also has the capability to video record its surroundings and transmit a copy of the video to a mobile phone.
RABIE and KOBIE are merely glimpses of what robotics could be like in the (hopefully not so far-off) future. What will happen with this technology — for now, we could only speculate.
Source: Akihabara News via Ubergizmo
