documents the japanese humanoid robotics

source: cameralabsorg

Лишь один из двух существующих Хироси Исигуро способен дышать. Второй – удивительно реалистичная копия. Директор Intelligent Robotics Labarotory университета в Осаке, настоящий Хироси Исигуро, совершил революцию в области исследования и создания человекоподобных роботов.

Не сложно понять, почему британский фотограф Луиза Уиттон (Luisa Whitton) решила задокументировать эти сюрреалистические творения в 2011 году, когда они начали появляться на публике. Название её серии – «Как насчёт сердца» (What About The Heart) – отражает озабоченность профессора Исигуро вопросом: можно ли искусственно создать сущность человека.

Более десяти лет японский учёный пытается создать собственную копию, которая содержала бы его дух – «sonzai-kan». Для робота-двойника Geminoid H1-1 он использовал «силиконовую резину, пневматические приводы, мощную электронику и волосы с собственной головы». Уиттон говорит, что «восточный подход» к робототехнике уникален:

«В Японии роботов рассматривают, как возможность создать товарищей, а не в качестве военных разработок или оружия …».

Потрясённая тонкостью грани между роботом и человеком, фотограф спросила Исигуро: «А как же сердце?»
На что профессор ответил: «Это самая несложная часть. Искусственные сердца сейчас очень популярны. С печенью гораздо сложнее».
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source: niusnews

大家都知道日本對機器人有某種程度的狂熱，從《哆啦Ａ夢》到《20世紀少年》，《新世代福音戰士》到《鋼彈》，以機器人為主題的故事往往是賣座保證。日本的機器人科技到底發展到什麼程度，讓我們透過英國攝影師Luisa Whitton的作品來瞭解。

日本的機器人科技，以創造出能取代人類變成主要勞動力的機器人為發展目標。成品擁有宛如真人的外形，皮膚、五官、毛孔，無一不真，卻具備不可思議的優秀體能。

由攝影師在日本待了數月，訪問當地的智能機器研究室取得的這組照片，取名為《What About the Heart?》，乾淨的畫面構成卻令觀者感到不安。

當科技真的進步到能完全複製出一個難辨真假的機器人，究竟人類一詞的定義會如何改變呢？
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source: ufunknet

Avec son projet « What about the heart?« , la photographe Luisa Whitton, basée à Londres, a décidé de documenter l’industrie robotique japonaise et ses avancées, cherchant à réduire au maximum la distance séparant les humains des robots… Une série fascinante aux frontières de la science fiction, réalisée en collaboration avec Hiroshi Ishiguro et Osamu Kitagawa.
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source: repubblicait

Uno sguardo nell’industria robotica di nicchia giapponese, quella degli androidi, in cui si prova a creare robot che abbiano più possibile aspetto umano. La sfida del futuro è quella di riuscire a riprodurre anche sentimenti e aspetti caratteriali. Un fotoprogetto guidato da una domanda su cosa significhi “essere umani”: il cuore che fine fa? La risposta, alla fotografa Luisa Whitton, è dello scienziato giapponese Hiroshi Ishiguro che ha creato un androide a sua immagine e somiglianza e che è andato in crisi quando si è accorto che, mentre lui invecchiava, la sua copia robotica manteneva inalterato il suo aspetto: “Il cuore è la parte più facile – ha raccontato – e i cuori artificiali sono molto popolari al momento. E’ il fegato l’organo più difficile da trovare”
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source: catalogodiseno

What about the Heart? o ”Qué pasa con el Corazón?” es el nombre de la serie de registros fotográficos e investigación de la fotógrafa británica Luisa Whitton en relación a los avances de la industria de la robótica y la creación de humanoides artificiales en japón. Qué significa ser un Ser Humano hoy en día en el contexto de este desarrollo de la Biotecnología? es la pregunta que se formula la fotógrafa. Qué pasa con el Corazón? pregunta Luisa Whitton al científico de la Universidad de Osaka Hiroshi Ishiguro a lo que el científico responde con algo de ironía: El corazón es muy fácil de producir de manera artificial, el hígado es mucho más complicado.

En el contexto de la investigación, Luisa Whitton entrevista también al cientifico Minrou Asda, director de la división de neurociencia cognitiva artificial en la Universidad de Osaka. En un extracto de la entrevista el científico comenta: ”En japón no somos tan cerrados en cuanto a la religión y el avance de la ciencia. Para mi resulta extraño que en algunos estados de Norte América se prohíba la enseñanza del Darwinismo. Como científicos japoneses sentimos la absoluta libertad de avanzar en el desarrollo de la ciencia y la tecnología sin ver afectada nuestra filosofía y religión”. A esto Minrou Asda agrega: ”Sabía usted que cuando Honda diseño Asimio y el Robot P3 le consultaron al Vaticano su opinión y el Vaticano respondió: Adelante, Dios Confía plenamente en el valor de la Humanidad.”
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source: zupi

“O que acontece com o coração?” é um documentário feito pela artista londrina Luisa Whitton, que oferece um vislumbre dos avanços tecnológicos

contemporâneos da indústria robótica japonesa. O nicho desse mercado é impulsionado por uma busca filosófica em entender o que significa “ser humano”, e a resposta comum é produzir robôs que cada vez mais se assemelham aos humanos tanto na capacidade física quanto na mental.
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source: fastcoexist

When photographer Luisa Whitton traveled to Japan in 2010, she planned a trip to visit the nation’s top roboticists and their increasingly life-like creations. As she interviewed scientists who made robots with silicon faces that blinked and pursed their lips, she kept returning to one question: What does it mean to be human?

The answer isn’t always very clear. Hiroshi Ishiguro, one of Japan’s top roboticists at Osaka University, built a replica of himself he calls the Geminoid. When Whitton went to interview him, he told her about how infusing Sonzai-Kan, a Japanese term for a person’s spirit or presence, into robotics has become the focal point of his research. But Ishiguro himself is now brushing up against the discomfort of relating too to his “other”—he famously had plastic surgery to combat his naturally aging face against Geminoid’s static one.

“I was initially drawn to the uncanny and surrealistic aspect to Ishiguro’ story, and this area of robotics, specifically in Japan, has a prolific reputation in pushing the boundaries between science, art and philosophy,” Whitton tells Co.Exist by email. “The relationship between Hiroshi and robot is a prime example of how technology can affect the human condition, and perhaps for Hiroshi alone what it means to be human for himself.”

Whitton interviewed a number of roboticists like Ishiguro and documented their work in video and and photographs. The most uncanny experience she had herself is when she operated a robot remotely through a headpiece and gloves at the University of Keio. By putting on the headset and gloves and immersing herself in the world through the robot’s perspective, she was able to feel her environment as if she were the robot.

But even if most humans don’t have access to the kind of phantasmagoric technology Whitton’s been following, there’s no doubt that the line between the human and machine is becoming thinner every day. Google Glass comes as one easy example, but advances in prosthesis, health tracking technology, or even the attachment a person feels to a smartphone (rendered, for example, by Joaquin Phoenix’s character’s relationship in Her) make up a bigger universe of human-technological interactions that challenge traditional ideas of personhood.
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source: konbini

We are living in the “information age”, whatever that means. Between the birth of humanity and the year 2003 five exabytes of information were recorded by humans. Now, in 2014, we humans record more than five exabytes of new information every two days.

What we think we know today may not be at all certain tomorrow, but one thing is for sure: we’re living in the future. So that you can be ready for whatever the future holds, each week we’ll search high and low online to bring you the best futuristic content from the worlds of science, art, design, architecture, computing and robotics.

How Do We Know What ‘Human’ Means Anymore?
If Luisa Whitton‘s beautiful photo project illustrates anything, it is that we are coming dangerously close to a world in which personalized robots live and work alongside us every day.

Incredible modern breakthroughs in animatronics and robotic science mean that a future dominated by electronic servants is not only possible but highly probable.

The project’s title raises perhaps the most interesting point of Luisa’s experiment – How will we define ‘human’ in the years to come. Until now the seven signs of life have served as an pragmatic guide to what is and isn’t a ‘living thing’. But when robots can grow, reproduce and respire then how can we judge the difference between animate and inanimate.

With an underclass of robots will come the normal perversions humans fall prey to – robosexuality and robot rights will no doubt be key issues of the future, even if they seem stupid now.

Of course fear of our robotic friends is only natural. But if half the “xenophobic” people on the planet can’t deal with race and gender equality then how will we fair against future immigrant robots stealing our jobs?

As the video below highlights, for every job a robot takes from a human many more jobs in programming, design, manufacture and maintenance are created. But the question still remains: could you live, love and laugh with a robotic companion?
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source: luisawhitton

Luisa Whitton (b.1991) is a photographer based in London. After graduating from BA Photography at London College of Communication in 2013, Luisa continues to develop her long term project What About the Heart? on the humanoid robotics industry of Japan, whilst through smaller projects exploring the progress of technology and it’s effects on the human condition. Her project work has been published internationally, in The British Journal of Photography, Hotshoe, Telegraph, L’oeil and The Times, and has been exhibited at the Royal Institute of Science. Most recently, Whitton was selected as one of Magnum’s Top 30 Under 30, and appeared on BBC Radio 4’s show Something Understood, Artificial Soul.

The contemporary advances of technology in Japan have entered a realm that was once only seen in science fiction. A niche of the Japanese robotics industry is driven by a philosophical pursuit to understand what it means to be human, and believes that making human robotics is the answer.

Photographer Luisa Whitton has spent several months in Japan working with Scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro, a Japanese scientist who built a robotic copy of himself, and continues to work with other scientists documenting their scientific progress on humanoids. Whitton’s probing into the Japanese humanoid industry is motivated by a pursuit to answer; what drives technological progress? And with a technological future in sight, what will the human consequences be? The photographic series focuses heavily on the eerily lifelike faces, that were constructed for the robots as a way to question the humanistic aspect of the subject.

‘In the photographs, I am trying to subvert the traditional formula of portraiture and lure the audience into a debate on the boundaries that determine the dichotomy of human/not human. The photographs become documents of objects that sit between scientific tool and horrid simulacrum.’

Whitton’s images are often accompanied by transcribed interviews between herself and the scientists, where she asks questions on the philosophy and sociological impact in creating such robots. In doing so the text gives access to the human side of the project, and an insight into the scientist’s pursuit of answering the larger question: what does it mean to be human as technology progresses?

In an interview with Scientist Hiroshi Ishiguro on the definition of being human , she asks; ‘What about the heart?’ he answers, unaware of the abstract intentions of her question; ‘The is the easiest part; artificial hearts is very popular now. The liver is more difficult’.