Robots you need to have at some point in the future

As adolescence draws to a close, a young man's fancy lightly turns from 1.5 metre Gundam robots to machinery of the more feminine persuasion. How lucky we are to live in an age where fembots are no longer the stuff of late night fantasies.


Meet Rong Cheng, the Chinese robot who has already been widely feted for her beauty and limited intelligence. Rong boasts the sort of beauty you get after using one too many skin-whitening creams. Her delicate features framed against a smooth, white and hard exterior are very reminiscent of movie star Nicole Kidman. In terms of life skills though, the robot is infinitely more versatile. She responds to 1000 Chinese words, she bows, she dances, and best of all she cracks open a nice cold beer without the aid of a bottle opener.


So lifelike are her attributes that it is difficult to remember that under all that vibrant & womanly tulle lies a bunch of wires and circuits. The effect can be quite jarring when seeing the woman of your dreams being disassembled for routine maintenance but no less shocking than say, witnessing the normal wear and tear of a female celebrity.



Besides female robots, it seems that in the future we're going to be having a lot more concierge robots as well. This bodes well because it means that rather than wreaking havoc and destruction upon each other, men will be more concerned about scoring hard-to-get restaurant tables and theater tickets to impress their robot dates. Roboconcierge may not be as sleek and lethal as T1000 but he will be able to arrange for the best seats on Broadway even if he has to go back in time to do so.



Finally if your tastes run to female simians, good news is at hand because Beijing University has come up with a fetchingly hairy chimpanzee robot.



The unattractive pink tracksuit is a dead giveaway that she is merely a prototype but as future models evolve, we can expect to see more leg and French manicured nails.

Next update: Wednesday 16 August 2006