User:Cyberguru/Saya Gynoid

Saya, Gynoid

Summary
Saya is a "secretary" type robot developed in Japan, by Prof. Kabaishi. She or it, can get sad, even mad - she has 'feelings'. she or it can give out directions to places and answer back in 700 variations and endless expresions.

The robot, designed and developed by Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi and other professors at the Tokyo University of Science who insist that Saya who has no ability to learn is not meant to replace human teachers, just to highlight the joys of technology. Saya however has over 3o moving parts, can display emotion, can relay orders via speech and she is controlled via remote control. Saya’s name comes from the Malay language and means “I”.



Exposition
Saya is an older "gynoid" from Japan. Developed in 2004, her initial role was as a robot receptionist; she sat in a chair in Ben Gurion University's reception area, and dealt with queries as they came in. At the time, the gynoid was only capable of very basic commands: Directions to places in the building, essentially.

Saya is the result of 15 years of research and is being tested as a teacher after working as a receptionist. It is multilingual, can organise set tasks for pupils, call the roll and get angry when the kids misbehave.

The robot was originally developed for companies who want to cut costs by replacing a variety of workers, including secretaries, in a bid to allow firms to cut costs while still retaining some kind of human interaction. Replacing office workers a such as secretaries and receptionists with an android that had a range of human expressions.

Saya is the latest example of robots spreading to every aspect of life in Japan. She's already employed as a receptionist in the foyer of Tokyo University where dressed in a shape-hugging yellow shirt she greats and meets visitors. Others are already used as traffic wardens and guides attempt to lure university graduates to sign up to courses and one is even being developed to provide company to Alzheimer's sufferers.

Her inventor by Professor Hirohi Kobayashi of Tokyo University has been reported as saying while it isn't hard to build a robot that looks like a human being, it is much more difficult to create software that mimics the human mind. But he believes that within a few years robots with the physical and mental skills of a two-year old child will be available.

Her creator, science professor Hiroshi Kobayashi at the University of Tokyo, had been working on a robot for 15 years. In the years since, this robotics project has not been idle, and her makers have been continually improving her. Like most gynoids, she is as realistically human as her creator, professor Hiroshi Kobayashi of the Tokyo University of Science can make her - which is to say, not much. Saya's skin is pulled taut over her robotic features in an attempt to make her more human-looking. Her skin is rubber, instead of the more advanced synthetic skins developed for later model gynoids, but the aspects that make her humanish, lay in her emotions, and facial movements, not her skin.

Saya is just one example of Japan's determination to put a robot in every home by 2015. The Japanese government has said that by 2015 it wants a robot in every home and is pouring $35 million (£23 million) into robotic intelligence to make it happen.

Saya can express six basic emotions - surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness, and sadness. The emotions are articulated through changes in her expression, as her skin is deformed by subsurface actuators. She can speak different languages, carry out roll calls, set tasks and make facial expressions – including anger – thanks to 18 motors hidden behind her latex face.

"Robots that look human tend to be a big hit with young children and the elderly, ", Professor Hiroshi Kobayashi stated when demonstrating her educational capabilities in early 2009. "Children even start crying when they are scolded."

Saya's educational career started at the beginning of 2009, when she was placed in a classroom with a handful of children aged between 10 and 12 years old. Saya still cannot do very much: she can call out children's names, monitor the nose level, and tell the children to be quiet, even recognise individual children. However, that is about the limit of her capability. She sits at her desk, and does not walk around the room, although her head moves.

However, there is more to her than her AI. Upon command, Saya's eye-cameras are turned over to a remote operator, who can turn her head, engage her emotional routines and speak through her mouth, instructing the children on what to do next in the classroom. Very handy, if the teacher is unavoidably called away, and would like to continue to monitor their class, even if there is no sentient teacher to take over.

Kobayashi says Saya is just meant to help people and warns against getting hopes up too high for its possibilities.

"The robot has no intelligence. It has no ability to learn. It has no identity," he said. "It is just a tool."