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Robotic butt a very strange tail

Forget about Siri, give us "Shiri," the robo-butt (robutt?) that "expresses various emotions with organic movements of the artificial muscles."

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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  • Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.
Edward Moyer
2 min read
 
Smack! Work that research! Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET

The thrill of verbally abusing Siri had pretty much petered out, and we were really ready to roll up our sleeves and whip some actual robot booty.

Now, thanks to "Shiri" -- and the University of Electro-Comunications in Tokyo -- we can. Shiri, you see, is -- to put it bluntly -- a robutt. Or, perhaps, a robo-butt. The university itself calls it "a buttocks humanoid robot that expresses various emotions with organic movements of the artificial muscles."

And, according to the embedded video, the project's purpose is twofold: to advance the "innovative use of robotics technology and its purpose," and "to raise the argument as to what perceptions will be manifested in the minds of people who communicate with Shiri."

We think they can check "innovative use of robotics technology" off the list. As for point No. 2, well, who knows? Let's roll the video already and get on with the robot spankfest.

One last thing though: Is Shiri for real? We're not 100 percent certain, but it seems to be. Along with informing us that "Shiri" means "buttocks" in Japanese, Kotaku reports that the project "is the work of researcher Nobuhiro Takahashi (this possibly mischievous fellow perhaps?).... Takahashi is also working on 'self-hugging' rigs as well as some sort of kissing simulator."

And we know the Japanese are into quiveringly emotive robo-devices. Plus, the university does seem to have a legitimate Web site. And this project would seem to support the tagline on the site's home page: "aiming to establish a unique and exciting campus." Indeed.

(Via Mashable)