Simon the Robot

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I once posted a link to 'Simon the Robot'. Simon is an experiment in human - robot interfaces. He's supposed to look human enough to be friendly to work with.


It really bugged me just how close his face looked to .....
Not being an expert with the Gimp or Photoshop (I can cut and paste stuff from pictures around but NOT draw!), so I printed his picture and modified it with some Sharpies and then scanned it.

Now THAT'S better! I hated his "football helmet" hair, and "antenna" ears!

[AprilSeven]

AWWWWW - That's MUCH better!!

I don't get those "ping-pong paddles" they have coming out of his head! Glad you gave him "normal" ears!

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

After seeing videos of Simon (he couldn't walk and was stationary in one spot, but could turn about to reach object around him), I imagined building a robot like him. Only I thought of adding legs so he could walk about like a person. A walking robot is a tricky thing (Honda's first Asimo's fell down stairs) but it has been done. Naturally I envisioned him fully fleshed out with 'skin' over his hands and arms.

If you're going to build a robot like Simon to explore human - robot interaction you need to make the 'bot as human like as possible. Simon's face was a first attempt at that. Now if I were working for the outfit that was doing this work, I'd be dying to dress the thing up to look just like Astro, copyrights be DAMNED! Can you thing of another robot you'd rather interact with?

[Little Brown Fox]

Thing is, though, Atom doesn't really look like a human. Not realistically, anyway. Although that can be a good thing, when you consider the obstacle posed by the Uncanny Valley.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Thing is, though, Atom doesn't really look like a human. Not realistically, anyway. Although that can be a good thing, when you consider the obstacle posed by the Uncanny Valley.

Well .... think about this. In the manga and the anime Atom is often mistaken for a real human child. The characters in the story don't see him the way WE do. In the Pluto, manga, many of the robots are drawn AS human characters. WE are seeing them the same way that the characters in the manga are. The Pluto manga is unique in this way, the reader can see which robots look like robots to the humans in the story. Tezuka rarely gave us this view because almost ALL of his characters have the large manga eyes and other distortions that make it hard to tell, though he did draw robots that were OBVIOUSLY robots.

He also found a way to differ between Tobio (the human boy) and Astro, in the hair. Both have the spiky hair, but Astro's drawn like solid metal or plastic, Tobio's shows up individual hairs sticking up. But I think he did that for the reader's benefit, NOT for the characters in the story, who can't tell the difference.

[Little Brown Fox]

I don't really like how Atom looks in Pluto, though. And besides, if someone tried building him to look more human like that, he'd be creepy-looking- Uncanny Valley, remember? Things that don't look exactly like humans (like the Leo robot, for instance) tend to be cuter (and far less creepy).

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Well that's what makes manga so popular.

I don't really like how Atom looks in Pluto, though. And besides, if someone tried building him to look more human like that, he'd be creepy-looking- Uncanny Valley, remember? Things that don't look exactly like humans (like the Leo robot, for instance) tend to be cuter (and far less creepy).

[Juanita]

I don't really like how Atom looks in Pluto, though. And besides, if someone tried building him to look more human like that, he'd be creepy-looking- Uncanny Valley, remember? Things that don't look exactly like humans (like the Leo robot, for instance) tend to be cuter (and far less creepy).

But...but he's beautiful in Pluto ;-;

I LOVE Leo! He's my favorite robot to date, and I'd much rather interact with him than that dull, creepy robot. I've seen far more realistic robots than that, though they don't seem to do as much. Yet. Heck, Leo is more realistic than that, and he's not even based on a real species. I really wish they hadn't stopped working with him. The progress they were making was excellent, and the current robot NASA is working on now is quite disappointing when compared to Leo.
I've see a couple videos of Simon, but it's just not the same. What NASA had with Leo was great, and I think stopping his development was a terrible choice.

[Little Brown Fox]

... Wait. What?

They stopped working with Leo? I AM DISAPPOINT, NASA.

[Juanita]

Yup.
Now they're working on this disappointment. http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/huggable/overview/overview.html
Really, NASA? Really?