{"id":5591,"date":"2011-03-08T07:52:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T11:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=5591"},"modified":"2011-03-07T15:14:59","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T19:14:59","slug":"new-cell-phone-will-stare-into-your-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/?p=5591","title":{"rendered":"New Cell Phone Will Stare Into Your Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/elfoid-117x150.jpg\" alt=\"Elfoid\" title=\"Elfoid\" width=\"117\" height=\"150\" class=\"contentimg\" \/>Last year roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University unveiled the <a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/humanoids\/telenoid-r1-hiroshi-ishiguro-newest-and-strangest-android\">Telenoid<\/a>, a toddler-sized robot designed to &#8220;transmit the presence&#8221; of a person remotely.  The idea is to have webcams track a user&#8217;s face and head movements and then have the robot mimic those movements, which is supposed to increase the &#8220;humanness&#8221; of the interaction despite the fact that the thing falls smack into the Uncanny Valley.<\/p>\n<p>Ishiguro and his colleagues have now shrunk the Telenoid into the <a href=\"http:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/automaton\/robotics\/humanoids\/elfoid-portable-telepresence-android\">Elfoid<\/a>, a prototype cell phone that allows callers to &#8220;feel each other&#8217;s presence.&#8221;  So you call somebody, and their Elfoid wriggles to life in their shirt pocket, and after they&#8217;re finished pissing themselves they can totally bask in your telepresence.<\/p>\n<p>Please join me in being utterly unsurprised that this thing is Japanese.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the designers feel that a more humanoid design (which will ultimately be able to exhibit facial expressions and make gestures) will overcome some of the limitations of voice-only communication.  It&#8217;s an interesting idea, and I can already foresee all sorts of interesting customizations being possible.  I can also foresee these things being a major plot point in at least one horror movie in the next five years.  Yeesh.<\/p>\n<p><small>(Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/\">The Art of Darkness<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University unveiled the Telenoid, a toddler-sized robot designed to &#8220;transmit the presence&#8221; of a person remotely. The idea is to have webcams track a user&#8217;s face and head movements and then have the robot mimic those movements, which is supposed to increase the &#8220;humanness&#8221; of the interaction despite [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5591"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5597,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5591\/revisions\/5597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}