The R. Dorothy Project


Updates:

[September 24, 2009]  Making Dorothy a Body

Where we ask "What are little girls made of?"

This is where my three great obsessions finally meet.

The Big O (Wiki article)

The Big O Anime is one that I have really enjoyed. I am not truly of the Otaku-Caste... My interests in Anime are pretty plebian, exposed mostly by luck:
...and several others. I love a lot of different Anime programs!

But of these, The Big O has caught my imagination. What more could a mad scientist ask for? Gadgets, androids, giant robots with Popeye forearms that crush opponents, soap opera, metaphysical mopery and dopery...

Of the characters in The Big O Anime, the one that has my rapt attention is R. Dorothy Wayneright. In a tip-of-the-hat to Issac Asimov, (reference, for example, the character of R. Daneel Olivaw in Caves of Steel) the prefix 'R' is added to her name, so instead of being 'Ms. Dorothy' she is 'R. Dorothy'.

Of course, I have had crushes on Androids before... before she was Catwoman on the Batman television series (1966), Julie Newmar was "My Living Doll"(1964), a robot named "Rhoda". (Wiki article)
Before Yancy Butler became the Wielder of the Witchblade(2001), she was in a brief series where she portrayed an android detective, Eve, with interchangeable eyes: "Mann & Machine"(1992). (Wiki article)

But R. Dorothy was a cartoon character. She was portrayed by the voice actress Lia Sargent with just the right amount of emotion in her voice, she was drawn with too many personality 'quirks' to detail... but she has a huge advantage for anyone trying to create an adroid form. As a cartoon character, just coming close is great. If the end result looks and acts like an animated statue, people will see 'her' as just that... the 'Uncanny Valley' effect that 'creeps people out' when a robot is too close to human will never come into play!

Artificial Intelligence (Wiki A.I. Portal)

Back around 1975 while working at Compuserve, I first sat down and ran the Lisp program 'Eliza', which was the prototypical chatbot, making associations with recognized words and spoofing a Turing Test. It did not take long to find Eliza's limits, but I played with it at length anyway, trying to understand the code and the concepts behind this simple program that produced very complicated behavior. Eight years later, in the course of finishing my Computer Science degree, I took the A.I. course that was then available.

In the years since, I have never lost interest in A.I. Rule-based systems are at the heart of most of the software I work on; but my interests in studies of the brain (letting us better understand computers) and studies of A.I. (letting us better understand the brain) have never flagged. I have, however, waited... as patiently as I could... for systems of sufficient speed and interconnectivity to become available. Now, with USB devices capable of bringing cameras, sound, and terabytes of memory within a single platform with motor control functionality, I can at last mate the parts I feel are necessary for an initial system.

I fully believe that true artificial intelligence, what YOU want to OWN... your computer talking to you, listening to you, SEEING you... can only be addressed by a MINIMUM of a computer system with eyes, ears, and at least one effector... a hand-and-arm. Anything less than that, and you are simply playing at experiments. Experiments leading to results require a machine that can learn tied to machinery with which it can interact with the world.

Robotics (Wiki Robotics Portal)

Hence, to create A.I. you need a robot. For the most effective and human-like A.I. you need a robot as humanoid as you can make it. And, in order to create a robot with a pleasing and unfrightening appearance, I suggest something like... the R. Dorothy Project.

This is a goal I have, actually, been working toward my entire life. Now, I believe, I am ready to mature a bit... and actually finish a hobby project. This hobby project. I will be placing far more up-to-date information tagged 'android' in my livejournal. Drawings and artwork for conceptual purposes I will put in my DeviantArt Account.

Live Journal

DeviantArt

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