Modest inventor shies from sex, hopes his lady robot will be used for good
11/12/2008 9:18:00 PM
Tamsyn Burgmann, THE CANADIAN PRESS
BRAMPTON, Ont. - To the casual observer, she's the very embodiment of a lady.
Dressed demurely in a blushing pink blouse, hands sheathed in dainty white gloves, Aiko - quite possibly Canada's first android - sits patiently, ready to engage in polite conversation using her 13,000-word vocabulary. She'll recognize your face, shake how-do-you-do, read you a story, add sums and deliver the current weather.
But underneath her wispy auburn hair and peaches and cream complexion is an anatomically correct silicone fembot, easily modified for any number of uses.
Of course peddling her to the sex industry would be lucrative, her creator agrees, but he insists he has far more noble aspirations for Aiko - which means "love child" in Japanese.
"To be honest with you, sex sells," said Trung Le, 33, after cradling the five-foot tall, 27-kilogram life-like doll on his lap for photographs in his parents' Brampton, Ont., home where he lives.
"It sells, but it's not like (she's) one of those $99 (dolls), right? It would be very expensive (to use that way). It would be cheaper just to spend money on my own, real girlfriend."
Le doesn't have a girlfriend right now, though, because he's been much too busy over the past year and a half developing the uber feminine robot. (To those who contend Aiko is his girlfriend, he has these words: "I don't care what they say.")
Costing him $25,000 so far in parts - including a
sex doll from Japan for a body, sensors on her head, arms, face and breasts, oodles of bone-structure mechanics, a camera in her neck and computer processors - the project has moved from hobby to full-fledged passion.
His hopes for the humanoid's use are wide, varied and all in the name of helping humanity.
Le sees possible applications within homes for the elderly, inside hospitals or the military, working reception or providing airport security.
