Visitors to Tokyo's Shinjuku ward my find themselves figuratively transported to the uncanny valley, if they take a stroll past Takashimaya department store, that is. Until Valentine's Day, a prominent display window there will play glassy prison cell to the impressive and unnerving Geminoid-F android. Geminoid-F is so strikingly lifelike in appearance, yet so thoroughly inhuman in many respects (head and eye movement among them), that it can only be the work of that master of the uncanny, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro.
Geminoid-F is an evolution of the Geminoid HI-1, which is perhaps more readily identifiable as the android doppelgänger of the Professor himself. Though Geminoid-F has a gentle countenance, it will not sit completely passively on display, programmed as it is with 65 human-like actions as well as a number of simulated emotions. It will not go out of its way to play to the crowd, but will interact to a certain extent, including returning the smiles of passers by.
Though Geminoid-F has been around for some time, the purpose of this latest experiment (if one can call it that) is to gauge the acceptance of shoppers to android clothes models, who are obviously less static and more lifelike than mannequins, but less demanding than human fashion models, who tend to ask for inconveniences such as wages, pee breaks and union representation.
DigInfo TV has video of the Geminoid-F in action, which you can see below.
Source: DigInfo TV
