Inglês — L. interpretação de texto - reading comprehension

Repliee is more than a humanoid robot ? it is an honest-to-goodness android, so lifelike that it seems like a real person. It has moist lips, glossy hair and vivid eyes that blink slowly. Seated on a stool with hands 5 folded primly on its lap at the 2005 World Exposition in Japan's Aichi prefecture, it wore a bright pink blazer and gray slacks. For a mesmerizing few seconds from several meters away, Repliee was virtually indistinguishable from an ordinary woman in her 30s. In fact, it was a copy of 10 one. Japan is proud of the most advanced humanoids in the world, which are expected to eventually be usedas the workforce diminishes among the decreasing and aging population. But why build a robot with pigmented silicone 15 skin, smooth gestures and even makeup? To Repliee's creator, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Director of Osaka University's Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, the answer is simple: Android science. Besides the justification for making robots 20 anthropomorphic and bipedal so they can work in human environments with architectural features such as stairs, Ishiguro believes that people respond better to very humanlike automatons. Androids can thus elicit the most natural communication. Appearance is very important 25 tohave better interpersonal relationships with a robot, says the 42-year-old Ishiguro. Robots are information media, especially humanoid robots. Their main role in our future is to interact naturally with people. Mild colorblindness forced Ishiguro to abandon his 30 aspirations of a career as an oil painter. Drawn to computer and robot vision instead, he built a guide robot for the blind as an undergraduate at the University of Yamanashi. A fan of the android character Data from theStar Trek franchise, he sees robots as the ideal vehicle 35 to understand more about ourselves. To imitate human looks and behaviorsuccessfully, Ishiguro combines robotics with cognitive science. In turn, cognitive science research can use the robot to study human perception, communication and other faculties. 40 This novel cross-fertilization is what Ishiguro describes as android science. In a 2005 paper, he and his collaborators explained it thus: To make the android humanlike, we must investigate human activity from the standpoint of cognitive science, behavioral science and 45 neuroscience, and to evaluate human activity, we need to implement processes that support it in the android. One key strategy in Ishiguro's approach is to model his artificial creations on real people.He began research four years ago with his then four-year-old daughter, 50 casting a rudimentary android from her body, but its mechanisms resulted in strange, unnatural motion. Humanlike robots run the risk of compromising people's comfort zones. Because the android's appearance is very similar to that of a human, any subtle 55 differences in motion and responses will make it seem strange. Repliee, though, is so lifelike that it has overcome the creepiness factor, partly because of the natural way it moves. Ishiguro wants his next android, a male, to be as 60 authentic as possible. The model? Himself. Thescientist thinks having a robot clone could ease his busy schedule: he could dispatch it to classes and meetings and then teleconference through it. My question has always been, Why are we living, and what is human? he says. An 65 Ishiguro made of circuitry and silicone might soon be answering his own questions.adapted from www.scientificamerican.com - May 2006

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