New Galatea or animate an android girl for a science fiction novel

    This article is written specifically for Habr - the most advanced audience of techies on the Internet.

    image
    The author of the sketch is illustrator Yu.M. Pak.

    It would seem, what is the need for a science fiction writer to use the help of a scientific consultant in the process of working on a book? In the end, the paper will endure everything. Need a cyborg girl? No problems! What do we have at the peak of popularity today? Sexual appearance? Easy! Incomparable physical force with human? Easy! Oh yes! A couple more lotions in the form of a super-powerful laser built into the eyeballs (for some reason!) And X-ray vision. Well, it started ...

    We went the other way. And they tried on the pages of the novel to collect an android, which does not give a damn about the laws of physics, and using the technologies of today or tomorrow. The purpose of the article is to find out your opinion, listen to reasoned criticism and, possibly, attract you to the process of further refinement of the android, whose birth will take place already in 2023 in Dubna, in one of the laboratories of the powerful CYBRG corporation. The first part of the story can be seen here . To be honest, we set ourselves a difficult task - to make the novel "Age of Aquarius" a kind of "alloy of lyrics and physics", and for this alloy to be strong enough, we just need your help! Everyone who is interested in this introduction, welcome to cat.

    It so happened that pseudo-science fiction, which is now abundant in bookstore shelves and movie theater screens, could never be compared in our understanding with the works of, for example, Stephen Hawking, who on the one hand remain largely fantastic hypotheses, and on the other , have a well-reasoned scientific rationale.

    It is precisely such works that really catch the imagination and provide food for the mind, direct it to the borders of the unknown, and not to the banal happy end, where the same sexual cyborgsha, who has incinerated all enemies to the last page, finds happiness in the arms of a man who is endlessly in love with her from flesh and blood. By the way, if someone liked the picture below, it is taken here )

    image

    Science fiction, in our opinion, is not just a fairy tale for adults. This is a vector that determines the direction of technological progress. And this article is a brief overview of existing attempts to create humanoid robots and an attempt to understand whether everything is ready for the appearance of the android described in the novel "AQUARIUS ERA" .

    For those who are in business, welcome to Moscow in the year 2023, where chipping people is no longer a topic for discussion, but a social norm; where the global corporation controls everything from your finances to the electronic lock on the door of your apartment; where artificial intelligence takes on a human form, and the impending struggle for power threatens to turn the closest friends into sworn enemies. With the lyrics for now, let's get back to thinking about robotics and artificial intelligence.

    And now the floor is given to Walker2000 , who has made an invaluable contribution to the writing of the novel, providing numerous technical consultations.

    Hello!

    How possible is the creation of an android indistinguishable from a person in the near future? Suppose the task is to design this device. And let there be an unlimited amount of resources and access to the latest technologies. Let us formulate the minimum list of systems that need to be developed:

    1. Musculoskeletal system (artificial bones, joints, ligaments and muscles, sensors controlling the position of body parts in space).
    2. Realistic faux leather with integrated pressure and temperature sensors.
    3. Power supply (operating principle, power output will need to be calculated).
    4. Sensors for obtaining information about the world around us (organs of vision, hearing, touch, smell).
    5. Communication system, namely, a device for articulate speech. Here we add a 5G transceiver and something like WiFi and Bluethooth LE interface (hehe, a cyborg can have something like a built-in smartphone, which will be very useful for the owner of the cyborg).
    6. Nervous system (apparently, these are wires for transferring energy to artificial muscles, transmitting signals from sensors).
    7. The brain as part of several subsystems.

    The brain is the most murky organ in the whole story. Nobody knows how it works yet, but it seems like they promise to tell you soon . But the artificial brain is likely to be represented by several subsystems.

    image

    The first is a strongly truncated limbic system (control of movements, balance, spatial orientation, control of the nutrition system, thermoregulation).

    The second is the receipt and processing of information about the surrounding world (most of the most likely will have to be plowed onto the visual analyzer). Also in this part should be present a sound analyzer, some kind of gas analyzer for some reasonably limited set of chemical compounds. Well, the analysis subsystem of tactile and temperature sensors.

    The third is the most mysterious part that determines the identity of the cyborg. This is the memory and experience of learning, judgment, desire, self-preservation instinct, feelings, analysis of one’s own emotions and social interaction. In our novel, we came up with a so far absent reality of an organic grown substrate with a huge number of neurons. Well, with us, these neurons somehow agreed among themselves there and suddenly began to form a certain individual)

    Fourth - an integrated smartphone with a direct several gigahertz bus connected to part of the third brain. For it is difficult at present to imagine an individual who exists separately from a smartphone. So why not give our artificial individual a built-in smartphone with a direct bus to his cerebral hemispheres? )

    Well, that's all. If something is forgotten - feel free to write in the comments.

    Creating the most realistic android is a rather laborious task. Suppose that several dozens of highly qualified specialists in each field work on each of the systems listed above. Plus, we need subcontractors to make composite bones, for example, polymers for artificial leather, etc. ... Apparently, the cost of such a project will be commensurate with the creation of a new automobile platform and will cost several billion dollars.

    We do not know that anyone in the real (not fantastic) world is threatening to solve a similar problem. But if we are mistaken, and there are similar projects, we will be very grateful for the comments.

    At the same time, there are quite significant successes in creating robots with one or more of the above systems. I believe that everyone already knows the Sofia robot from Hanson Robotics. Developers are trying to give her outstanding (in the world of robots) communication skills. By the way, last year on Habré wonderful material with a lot of photo content on this topic was released. Boston Dinamics robots

    image

    are also widely known for their advanced musculoskeletal system, and their developers are ethically controversial for their robots)

    image

    There is an interesting example of an actor’s robot. It is copied from the German playwright Thomas Melle and gives a lecture based on a book written by Thomas Melle himself. A couple of years ago, he suffered from bipolar disorder and poured all his feelings on paper, writing a bestseller. But here the main goal is not to replace man, but rather to emphasize the difference between natural and artificial man. To do this, wires stick out from the head of the "writer". In the video, which is given in the announcement , you can see the manufacturing process of such a robot.

    image

    Recently on the Internet flashed news about the robotpossessing very impressive fine motor skills. He even knows how to thread a needle (to be honest, a needle for this demonstration with a rather large eye). The video has brief TTX devices. A little hooked is that the maximum load that the robot arm can lift does not exceed 1.5 kg. That is, if you assemble a realistic android girl on such a platform, she will not take anything heavier than a clutch in her hands)

    image

    Success in certain areas of android building is impressive. But you don’t have to rely on the fact that in the next five years you will meet an android on the street, which will be very similar to a person. But in a science fiction novel - why not? )

    If the audience develops an interest in the issue of android construction, and the audience throws us links with more advanced examples of technologies or specific implementations of androids, we will be happy to continue this topic.

    That's all for now. Thank you very much for your attention and have a nice day!

    Also popular now: