Like most of the industrialized countries, Japan is going full speed into automation & robotics. Actually Japan has always been involved in the two, but the push over the last few years has been very apparent. Many grocery store chains and convenience stores now have self checkouts. One grocery store we frequent gives you a hand held scanner to scan items as you shop and self checkout.
Robots are now often seen in Tokyo, from security to cleaning to terminators like this one.
It is a helper robot for the Tokyo Metro lines in Shinjuku. I actually think it's a data collection device, but that's another story.
When I found it I was in a hurry to catch my train so I wasn't able to interact with it, but I immediately felt creeped out by it. The arms and hands are out of proportion and those eyes, the window to the soul less.
When I walked away, heading down the escalator, I looked back it was and it was still looking at me with a terminator like stare. I've always loved robots, but this thing seriously felt like it was peering into my soul, marking me for the coming singularity.
Another issue I had with it was it seemed androgynous. If they are going to make the robots look human I would prefer they look very male or very female. Alternatively they could use a manga or anime character for the robot. Maybe a Gundam or Astroboy or Lum-chan. I'm sure people would love that.
Ok, maybe not.
The two above images were created with DALL-E 2 https://openai.com/dall-e-2/
What do you think?
Thanks for reading!
