<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/07/24/magazine/29robot190.2.jpg" align="left"> The robot, developed by graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named Mertz. It had camera sensors behind its eyes, which were programmed to detect faces; when it found mine, the robot was supposed to gaze at me directly to initiate a kind of conversation. But Mertz was on the fritz that day, and one of its designers, a dark-haired young woman named Lijin Aryananda, was trying to figure out what was wrong with it. Mertz was getting fidgety, Aryananda was getting frustrated and I was starting to feel as if I were peeking behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz.
Robot Life Weight-loss coaches called Automs are about to receive a tryout. How would you react to hearing a robot comment, "It looks like you've had a little more to eat than usual recently"? Leonardo, another M.I.T. robot, peeks from behind.
Mertz consists of a metal head on a flexible neck. It has a childish computer-generated voice and expressive brows above its Ping-Pong-ball eyes — features designed to make a human feel kindly toward the robot and enjoy talking to it. But when something is off in the computer code, Mertz starts to babble like Chatty Cathy on speed, and it becomes clear that behind those big black eyes there’s truly nobody home.
meer foto's en filmpjes bij de Bron : NY Times
