Thespian robots take to the boards
THESPIAN ROBOTS are taking to the stage in Japan after inventors have moved on from mechanical dancers and house-sitters bringing out a new breed of acting robots.
These Hollywood wannabes are set to perform a play called Hataraku Watashi (I, Worker), which has premiered at Osaka University in one of Japan’s first robot-human theatre productions.
Forgetting lines is not something these actors need to worry about – each machine has been specially programmed to speak its lines with the human actors and move around the stage in true thespian style.
The play is set in the near future and focuses on a young couple which owns two housekeeping robots, one of these robots complains that it has been forced into boring and demeaning jobs leading to a discussion about robot’s roles in human life.
The play is only 20 minutes long – yet by 2010 the production is expected to become a full-length performance.
Playwright Oriza Hirata says the work raises possible questions about the relationship between humanity and technology.
The 3-ft tall Wakamaru robot features software which was developed by the University and is manufactured by Mitsubushi. µ
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Isaac Asimov dealt with this 60-70 years ago and did a much more thorough and interesting job doing it.
Back then he could only use words, albeit very well. Now we can actually witness it live on stage, or on a badly filmed dodgy DVD sold by the polite chinaman in the local car park.

It's funny, us humans are already doing dull and repetitive tasks so that we can have machines to make our lives more interesting.