Robo Thespian is an Animated Actor

Meet Robo Thespian, a robot actor who would love to come to your science center or museum in order to educate and interact with your customers.  As he explains in one of the videos on his website, RoboThespian.com, he is powered by a great number of servos and pneumatic tubes, allowing even such detailed operations as individual finger movement.  He is equipped with the latest Anti-Uncanny-Valley technology: big, expressive eyes and exaggerated facial features.  He is programmable by his user in fifteen languages (because what I really need is a Robo Thespian who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators).

Video of him monologuing after the jump. 

Make no mistake, however much his creators want to refer to him as an actor, Robo Thespian is not.  He has actually an animation of an actor, since all of his movement and mannerisms must be programmed by his user, making his performance only as good as his animator.

As always with computers (at least until the singularity), garbage in, garbage out.

Via Wired.

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Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

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