A few folks sent over versions of this story, about how the popular 61-member (!) Japanese girl music group AKB48 introduced its newest member, named Aimi Eguchi, in a candy commercial, which you can see below:
However, after some people started questioning all of this, it was revealed that "Aimi" wasn't a real person at all, but was a computer-generated image, made up of a composite of all of the other girls' "perfect" features. A separate video showed which parts of Aimi came from which other girls in the group. It gets interesting and/or creepy about halfway through, when the video directly highlights which feature from which girl was put into Aimi (though, oddly, the one who supplies the "eyebrows" seems to have her eyebrows covered by her bangs in the video):
I'm kind of wondering what the value is here -- other than generating publicity for the bizarreness of it. Since they're already using all the other girls, why create an additional mashup?
Watching robot videos is usually pretty entertaining -- especially when the robots fail catastrophically. But even when they don't mess up, robotic performances can be mesmerizing when the footage is played in fast motion. Here are just a few examples.
The flying car is one of those futuristic technologies that will probably always remain in the future. On the other hand, there are some science fiction devices like telepresence robots that are actually becoming affordable -- and maybe even practical. Here are some examples that could be taking your place (with your permission, of course).
There's an uncanny valley for artificially-generated images that look almost too human. And as robots become more advanced, they could also go through their own version of an uncanny valley. Here are some projects that might be creating some creepy-looking robots.
More and more robots are learning new tricks every day. In the not-too-distant future, everyone could be playing and working with robots all the time. Here are some interesting videos of robots demonstrating cool motor skills.
Robots are becoming essential tools for all sorts of tasks. Some jobs that simply can't be done by people are perfect for remote-controlled machines. As a tribute to our hard-working metal friends, here's a short list of some bots that are making the world a safer place.
Robots are incredibly useful machines that are becoming more and more important for everyone. Kids are building them. Robots are building more robots. Pretty soon, we'll be surrounded by robots... oh sorry Roomba, we already are. Here are some cool videos and some examples of robots that are helping us out (and not trying to enslave us).
Humanoid robots are pretty cool, but robot designers are also looking at other kinds of animals that would make for useful robotic mechanisms. By mimicking nature, engineers might also learn how to make robots move more efficiently. Here are just some examples where biology inspired specific robotic designs.
Everyone universally hated 'Clippy' when it popped up and tried to be helpful. So imagine the hate that could arise if a humanoid robot wondered around and tried to be helpful all the time. Thankfully, the field of robotics is not quite up to letting such a machine loose on the general population, but plenty of researchers are working on how to improve human-bot relations. C3PO has some early ancestors in a few of the following links.
Watching robot demonstrations should be a segment on late night TV -- just like "Is This Anything? or "Stupid Pet Tricks." Robotics labs seem to have an endless number of tasks to train robots to do, and some of them are pretty entertaining to just watch. Here are a few cool videos that show robots doing some nifty balancing tricks (and the last one is the best one).
