My goodness! I remember reading Isaac Asimov’s collection of short stories, I, Robot, which is only mildly related to the most recent Will Smith movie. In it he built a story line around his previously stated Three Laws of Robotics.

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

(pic sourced from The Korea Times)I thought of these rules again today after reading this from Kim Tae-gyu at The Korean Times:

Standing 1.6 meters tall and weighing about 50 kilograms, she can understand others, speak, blink with her eyes and makes several facial expressions.

But she is not human, rather an android developed by a team of South Korean scientists. It is only the second time in the world that an android has been developed _ Japan made the first one.

The team, headed by Baeg Moon-hong, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Thursday took the wrap off the female android, named EveR-1, during an exhibition at the Seoul Education Culture Center.

EveR-1, a combination of Eve and robot, looks just like a Korean female in her early 20s including her shape that is benchmarked against the nation’s model.

The human-sized robot can understand 400 words and make eye contact while talking via her lips that are synchronized with the pronunciation of words.

Fifteen tiny motors embedded into her silicon face enable her to make a total of four expressions in tune with as many sentiments _ joy, anger, sorrow and happiness.

From a distance, the android could be confused with a real, flesh and blood human being, according to Baeg.

Beag is promising that her lower half will be a movin’ and a groovin’ by the end of the year. Better dust off and read up on your Asimov folks, ’cause I hear the footsteps of the robotic era headin’ our way! Ya think she’ll do windows? (db)

Technorati Tags: EveR-1, Korean android, Baeg Moon-hong, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Isaac Asimov, I Robot

This entry was posted on Friday, May 5th, 2006 at 7:37 am and is filed under Blinded by Science, SciFi Becomes SciFact. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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