Gephyrophillia | Page One #5

Originally Posted on 03/20/2002 by Jeff Harris

Those crazy Japanese.

For a couple of years now, Sony has been trying to make the perfect robot. First, they made Aibo, the perfect robot dog (better than that robot dog George Jetson bought to compete with Astro for the honor of "family dog"). Not bad, a little over a grand, and AIBO's been a part of a lot of an electronics campaign and a part of that insipid voyeuristic show about vapid young adults living in a fancy house rent free and being videotaped, calling itself real, but having every brand-name and every profane word bleeped (that doesn't happen in the non-fake planet). Anywho, robot dogs are everywhere now, pricey ones like AIBO and inexpensive ones like Techno.

Sony's now experimenting with humanoid robots, and strangely enough, their first two had similar traits to our boy TOM. The first one, the SDR-3X, had a bubblehead and tha similar color scheme as Toonami's ultra-popular host. Coincidence? Maybe, considering that Toonami's not seen in Japan (yet). The updated version that you see to your left, the SDR-4X, isn't Toonami blue anymore, but the body is a lot more like TOM's, from the neck to the upper torso. Okay, maybe not, but what's the deal with the blue light in the center, approximately the same place as the nuclear core light in TOM's midsection?

Okay, maybe I'm seeing a little too much into this. But be honest. Wouldn't it be cool if you had a robot like that in your house?

Enjoy this rare midweek update. I'm hoping it won't be the last. Until we are one.

Later.

Jeff Harris
Webmaster
March 20, 2002