Super Terrific Japanese Thing: Kobian, the Robot Comedian
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| Takanishi Laboratory/Waseda University |
In typical Japanese fashion, Kobian’s full name is actually “Bipedal Humanoid Robot That Makes Humans Laugh With Use of the Method of Comedy and Affects Their Psychological State Actively.” Through exhaustive research, scientists tried to figure out what makes people laugh and see if they could program the robot to duplicate that.
Scientists being scientists, their study of humor led to conclusions like: “Part of the methods for making humans laugh are published by comedians or researchers. In order to achieve a robot’s behavior for making humans laugh based on these methods, we studied 6 books[16-21] in which the methods for comedy and the ways for funny conversations are gathered comprehensively. These methods in the books are picked up from wide range of skits or ways of expressions, but most of the methods are commonly the same between other contents. We extracted the methods that are especially common in these books and show them below.”
Apparently it worked for Japanese audience, but what about Topless Roboteers? It’s time for us to find out…
Did you laugh?
h/t AJ Feuerman via Incredible Things
About The Author
Luke Y. Thompson has been writing professionally about movies and pop-culture since 1999, and has also been an actor in some extremely cheap culty and horror movies you will probably never hear much about (he is nonetheless mostly proud of them, as he met his wife on one). As editor of The Robot's Voice since 2012, he can take the blame for the majority of the site's content, all of which he creates because he loves you very, very much. (Although he loves nachos more. Sorry.) Prior to TRV, Luke wrote for publications that include the New Times LA, Los Angeles CityBeat, E! Online, OC Weekly, Geekweek, GeekChicDaily, The L.A. Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Nerdist