AstroBoy Online Forums

If you search though the internet, and youtube in particular, you will find numerous examples of humanoid robots that exist today. Almost life like female humanoid androids from Japan and Korea exist today. These are much like Disney's audioanimatronic puppets designed for entertainment purposes, and to function as companions for the disabled.

Child like robots such as iCub that resemble human infants and toddlers, are being used to research human-robot interactions.

The most human like robot, in terms of its intelligence, and mobility is Honda's Asimo. Asimo is the closest thing to Atom that exists today. He is even the exact size as Atom at about 130cm tall (but he weights about twice Atom's 67 lbs). His voice is even a lot like that of the Japanese voice given him in the animes. I wish Honda would substitute Asimo's "Space helmet" head with something that looked like , and give him a pair of red boots!

I wonder if robotic companies have approached Tezuka industries with this idea but they've turned it down for whatever reason.

But that would require licensing fees, Tetsuwan Penguin.

"jeffbert" wrote:But that would require licensing fees, Tetsuwan Penguin.

In general the Japanese media companies have been a less 'demanding' on this sort of thing (excluding SONY) than their American counterparts. I think Tezuka would have been quite excited to see someone actually build a functional robot in Atom's image!

Japanese copyright laws as far as I know are a little more relaxed than American copyright laws, but I am not really knowledgeable on the specifics for either side other than the basics. I think for this the original license holders (I'm not sure whether to call it a copyright) would probably want some sort of partnership or compensation before production.

As for Tezuka's thoughts on having a functional robot in Atom's image... Hmm... That is something to think about.