A Japanese roboticist Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro is building androids to understand humans. One is an android version of a middle-aged family man — himself.

Photo gallery of his androids at:
The robot, like the original, has a thin frame, a large head, furrowed brows, and piercing eyes that, as one observer put it, seem on the verge of emitting laser beams. The android is fixed in a sitting posture, so it can’t walk out of the lab and go fetch groceries. But it does a fine job of what it’s intended to do: mimic a person.

Ishiguro controls this robot remotely, through his computer, using a microphone to capture his voice and a camera to track his face and head movements. When Ishiguro speaks, the android reproduces his intonations; when Ishiguro tilts his head, the android follows suit. The mechanical Ishiguro also blinks, twitches, and appears to be breathing, although some human behaviors are deliberately suppressed. In particular, when Ishiguro lights up a cigarette, the android abstains.

These robots have been covered many times by major media, such as Discovery channel, NHK, and BBC. Received Best Humanoid Award 4 times in RoboCup. In 2007, Synectics Survey of Contemporary Genius 2007 has selected him as one of the top 100 geniuses alive in the world today.

The idea of connecting a person’s brain so intimately with a remotely controlled body seems straight out of science fiction. In The Matrix, humans control virtual selves. In Avatar, the controlled bodies are alien-human hybrids. In the recent Bruce Willis movie Surrogates, people control robot proxies sent into the world in their places. Attentive viewers will notice that Ishiguro and the Geminoid have cameo roles, appearing in a TV news report on the rapid progress of ”robotic surrogacy.”

Ishiguro’s surrogate doesn’t have sensing and actuation capabilities as sophisticated as those in the movie. But even this relatively simple android is giving Ishiguro great insight into how our brains work when we come face to face with a machine that looks like a person. He’s also investigating, with assistance from cognitive scientists, how the operator’s brain behaves. Teleoperating the android can be so immersive that strange things happen. Simply touching the android is enough to trigger a physical sensation in him, Ishiguro says, almost as though he were inhabiting the robot’s body.

Join us at the GF2045 International Congress to meet Dr. Ishiguro, see his famous geminoid, and learn more about new and amazing technologies in life extension, robotics, prosthetics and brain function from the world's leading scientists.


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