Yesterday, my Speech Brother Eric B. was lamenting an upcoming visit to The Dentist. For those of you who don’t know Eric B., he loves sweets almost as much as he loves the sweet technology that is Speech. And–due to his sweet tooth–dental visits are often nightmarish torture sessions full of weeping and muted cursing.
Well, one speech thing lead to another, as it often does at Speech Tech HQ, and we discovered the Simroid–a patient robot developed by Japan’s Kokoro Company as a training tool for aspiring dentists.
Kokoro offers a host of Actroids–ultra-realistic humanoid robots for rental–and a few robotic dinosaurs. But the Simroid is really something special. This Creepy Talking Robot can follow spoken instructions, closely monitor a dentist’s performance during mock treatments, and react in a human-like way to pain.
I don’t want to get carried away, Speech Heads, but Simroid may be the Creepy Talking Robot Apotheosis.
I would try to describe The Simroid Experience but this is something you need to see for yourself. Take a look Speech Heads, At Your Own Risk:
[editor's note: much of this robot's 'speech' is limited to agonized grunting and moaning.]
[...] 6. Simroid [...]