Wanted: Robot Seeking Friendship

Forget about dating, pets, or even children for life-long friendship.  How about instead creating your own super-intelligent robotic companion: one that looks like you, picks up your mannerisms, and even acquires similar personality traits?  It’s an eerie thought, but at the Terasem Movement Foundation, “friend robots” can make for genuine emotional companions and even preserve eternal life.

Let me introduce you to Bina48, the body-less robot who wants to be your friend.

Physically, the mannequin’s shoulder-base and cheap blonde wig might be more reminiscent of a Furby than a real human.  But her face, made of a skin-like material called “frubber,” complete with a set of 30 motors underneath, allows her to show basic emotions through smiles and frowns. And more importantly, Bina48 has a personality.

Well, to be more accurate, she is based on the personality of Bina Rothblatt, the real-life partner of Terasem’s founder, Dr. Martine Rothblatt.  Storing a database of dozens of hours of interviews with the real Bina, Bina48 contains a “character engine” with software that combines logic and motive to develop a more dynamic, and more human-like, worldview.

Still, in an interview with New York Times Reporter Amy Harmon, Bina48 proved to be, at her best, socially awkward.  While she could quickly calculate current weather conditions and name the first US president, she failed to pickup on an enthusiastic “Cool!” – “Ambiguous. Cold weather or cold sickness?” As for her feelings on Vermont?  She replied, “We have a lot of moose.”

Bina48 represents the Terasem Foundation’s central Life Naut Project, which encourages people to “backup” their life by uploading images, thoughts, and personality traits to an online database.  According to Bruce Duncan, Terasem’s managing director, the project’s essential goal explores the question,

“’Will we be able to upload ourselves one day to robots, or download ourselves into robots, and maybe even stem-cell generated organic bodies?’”

Although still far from being man’s next best friend, constant software updates means Bina48 is forever learning from and adjusting to her surrounding environment.

In any case, Bina48 is one robot experiment worth getting to know.

New York Times: “Making Friends With a Robot Named Bina48″

Life Naut Project

[via Engadget]