Tokyo store’s female android looking for love

Pretty Geminoid is waiting for a beau–carbon-based or otherwise.

(Credit:
Courtesy Kokoro )

Ah, Valentine’s Day. It’s just around the corner, so have you thought about how you’ll express your love for your favorite inanimate object? Humans are so passe.

Japanese retailers have a suggestion. They’re setting geek hearts aflutter with a pretty, ageless female android who’s looking for love.

Clutching a bag and cell phone, she seems to be waiting for a suitor.

“Android falls in love? She is waiting for you” reads the writing on her glass box at Takashimaya Department Store in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.

The special Valentine’s display features Geminoid F, the photogenic robot developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and colleagues.

Geminoid is modeled on a woman in her twenties.

(Credit:
Courtesy Hiroshi Ishiguro)

The mechanical lady was modeled on a real woman in her twenties. She sits in her glass room at Takashimaya and greets shoppers.

Based on data from an embedded sensor array around her, the android reacts to people in the vicinity. She moves her shoulders and neck, and changes her facial expression, smiling or yawning, depen… [Read more]

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