Robots: They’re alive

An android is a robot that “looks exactly like a human,” explains knowledgeable, robot-friendly writer Tim Hornyak. “A humanoid is a robot in human form.

“The difference between android and humanoid is one of degree,” he adds. “Androids are humanoid robots that are very like human beings, often with artificial skin, hair, etc.”

Confused? The modern robot world does take some getting used to, and not only because of its strange vocabulary. That certainly isn’t the case in Japan, where, as Mr. Hornyak can attest, achievements in the field have gone far beyond the creation of the Roomba, a bland-looking vacuum-cleaning robot on the American market.

America also has robotic devices in hospital operating rooms and high-tech remote-controlled Predator drones in the military, but amazing as their capabilities are, such high-tech machines lack explicit personalities and excite nothing like the affection the Japanese extend to robots of all sizes and constructs.

The fascination robots inspire in Japan stems from the fact that they are “simultaneously science and fiction,” Mr. Hornyak says. How could lifelike robots be strange to people brought up on such action-oriented art forms as anime — Japanese animation — and manga, Japanese graphic novels that often border on the surreal?

“What’s striking is the difference in the two cultures,” says this Canadian-born resident of Tokyo. “The Japanese are practically breast-fed on positive images of robots.”

The attitude has developed over centuries, going back to feudal times and the tradition, among other remarkable living crafts, of devotion to little mechanical dolls — karakuri — that resemble human beings.

“They are biologically hard-wired to treat them [robots] as living entities,” he says.

Shinto, for instance, a religion born in ancient Japan, believes in the spiritual properties of natural objects and creatures and is regarded as a religion of the heart where one feels a personal connection to the world.

The author of “Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots,” a history of that country’s robotic forms and their cultural underpinnings, Mr. Hornyak came to the District recently to take part in the Kennedy Center’s current Japan! Culture+Hyperculture festival. He also has written for Lonely Planet guides and Scientific American magazine.

To illustrate his adopted homeland’s fondness for artificial creatures with human and animal miens, he pulls out of a small suitcase a plastic interactive toy dog named Aibo — or, “more correctly, ERS7-2” — made by Sony in 1999 “that sold out in 15 minutes.” The little dog, which is no longer in production, is treated “like a member of the family. It is a cult. People make cakes for them and dress them up.”

Mr. Hornyak rubs Aibo’s head, and it lights up. Scratching the puppy’s back makes its tail wag. Two microphones on either end and a camera in its nose help it respond to commands and remember faces.

“He has his own recharging station and goes back on his own when the time comes,” he says.

Aibo gets along fine with real dogs, Mr. Hornyak says. “There is no smell” and, of course, no cleanup jobs.

Form follows function in Paro, a small, white, fuzzy robot shaped like a seal whose name is a combination of Papa and robot. It was developed by engineer Takanori Shibata at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology as a therapeutic aid to provide comfort and companionship in hospitals and homes for the elderly. Known technically as a “mental commitment” robot, the creature makes a sound like a baby seal and can react to and remember motions. The seal shape was ideal, Mr. Shibata explains, “because it is easy to handle, has a soft body and a warm temperature.”

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