Tech Update

Good news for people who’d like to turn their international business meetings into terrifying dysmorphic collisions of man and machine. 

The Telenoid R1 is a paraplegic robot which looks like a seahorse and works as a video conferencing system. How? Well, by acting out the facial expressions of the person you’re talking to through it’s blank, doughy, lifeless, sinister, unfeeling, reptilian face. It basically looks like Chucky for the iPod age.

It’s been designed by Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University who reckons, “Eye contact and head movements are important for everybody. But we also gave the robot a minimal design, so that people can use their imagination to make it more personal”. There’s a mini portable one coming out that he hopes will replace the mobile phone (it won’t).

It’s not nice to vomit all over a project which has probably a lot of time and a lot of effort, but the Telenoid R1 looks like Centauri’s robot face from The Last Starfighter, a film whose futro effects and design were hardly mind-blowing in 1984.

I’m going to exercise my right NOT to invest in his company.

PETE BOG