|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