FRE-LAGE DOR DE LA ROBOTIQUE J

The Japanese never stop endowing their unique beliefs and stories with form and life. Dolls, automatons, and lately robots, have successively played a part in this long filiation of singularly Japanese stories.In this work, the author describes and questions the manner in which, in the early 21st century, an unexpected wave of interest, backed by major technical and technological advances, propelled the development and manufacture of robots which were often surprising and at times troubling, yet, for the most part, primarily vectors of enchantment.This decade – a genuine golden age of robotics in Japan – has seen robot autonomy actually enter the technical planning stage even as research and experiments have been leaving the robotic laboratories to enter all disciplinary fields, from various branches of engineering to the production of everyday objects. At the same time, robots have become omnipresent in the media as well as in philosophical reflection, and in such arts as the theatre.Zaven Paré is an artist/roboticist. He created the first electronic marionettes for theatrical use and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS/CNRS) awarded him a grant to participate in the Robot Actors Project from the moment it was created in the laboratories of Professor Ishiguro Hiroshi at Osaka University and at Kyoto’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). His robots are notably featured in The Ballard Institute of Connecticut’s collections and those of Lyon’s Puppets of the World Museum.