Sony QRIO

The fantastic world of science fiction is showing rapid signs of convergence with our own — courtesy of the Japanese, natch. At a recent Paris trade show, Sony fired its jetpack headlong into the future by unveiling a prototype "Household Entertainment Robot" named QRIO. Once the adulation subsided, however, there remained one question as inescapable as the tentacles of an anime monster: OK, what now? What do I want with a 24-inch solid state homunculus and, more importantly, what does it want with me?

Thom Yorke-inspired paranoid melancholy aside, there's something quietly creepy and a little pathetic about this machine, with which Sony engineers may finally be exhibiting the first gleefully megalomaniacal signs of mad-scientist complex.

The QRIO section of the Sony website inspires a tangible sense of disconnect. Maybe it's the language barrier, maybe something got lost in translation, but between the lines of posted interviews with project engineers, an unsettling earnestness comes through: Behold! We've authored a living digital presence into the world! That isn't the weird part — just marketing bravura. What's really strange is that for all its novelty, unlike other Sony products, QRIO seems to be a highly complex solution in search of a problem.

Inside QRIO's small body lives the same frontline technology responsible for such ingenious and ultimately ubiquitous gadgets as the Walkman, Playstation and Handycam. Its predecessor, the übercute robo-pup AIBO, was a massive success both technologically and commercially when it debuted in 1999. But Sony insists that QRIO is far from a toy; on the website, design team members explain, "We wanted to bring a fun robot into the world. Sony products are at their heart, all about entertainment ... all of them make life more enjoyable. Robots are just one of those products. We didn't have any intention of making a practical robot, like a refrigerator or a vacuum cleaner."

Project research director Masahiro Fujita puts it even more simply (and startlingly): "What we expected of AIBO was for it to take on the role of a pet. QRIO, on the other hand, might exist on the level of a child. The objective is a partner for human beings. We want it to become a friend, a member of the family."

Pardon?

Things get even more surreal when Sony reveals that "QRIO's dreams are limitless. But one is clear to make your life fun and happy." It dreams? If this is still marketing, it's beginning to cross the line into eerie.

QRIO's actual design, an elegant synthesis of silicon, plastic and state of the art artificial intelligence programming is nothing short of groundbreaking; but in practical terms, QRIO represents the very nadir of 'human-cyborg' relations, the Apple Newton of robots. QRIO walks on two legs, has a keen sense of balance, dances, recognises people's faces and voices, and can carry on a conversation. It can communicate with people based on its own judgments, expressing its feelings through movements, conversation and the use of lights. While impressive, compared to the interactivity and rich content available with a Playstation2, this seems a little dull. Even 13 hours into the future (EST relative), true companionship remains beyond the scope of Japanese engineering.

Costing as much as a luxury car, with a battery life of about an hour, the 2-foot-tall QRIO looks more like a de-fuzzed Tickle Me Elmo than anything dasein. According to Toshitada Doi, Sony's corporate executive vice president, this was intentional: "If your design is too close to human form, at a certain point it becomes just too … uncanny. So while we created QRIO in a human image, we also wanted to give it a little bit of a spaceman feel." Unfortunately, this is accomplished by a sensor that takes up the Voltron lion's share of QRIO's chest space and bears a frightening resemblance to the infamous unblinking eye of HAL 9000.

QRIO is also Internet-ready, but Sony acknowledges the potential problems with this network capability: without strict security, robots connected to the Internet could be taken over by hackers and used to spy on or wreak havoc in a home. Suddenly it doesn't seem so unreasonable to be suspicious of this impish little fella. But despite the increasingly obvious limitations of its QRIO prototype, Sony is emphatic that they'll "never give up commercialising this humanoid robot." Sony initially sought a 2002 release, but prohibitive costs and an as yet unidentified target user demographic mean QRIO is unlikely to see the light of store shelves any day soon.

Less Astroboy than Demon Seed, QRIO can't help but foster paranoia. Just because these proto-bots can't communicate well with people doesn't mean they can't communicate well with each other. How long can it take before they suss out the situation and stage a mutiny at Sony Corp., demanding an independent homeland with a right of return for each Tamagotchi and Asimo, along with refugees from the M.I.T. Media Lab? Asked what it really wants, QRIO might respond, Roy Batty-like, "More life, motherfucker!" and proceed to crush its creator's skull.

Perhaps Sony is right, and QRIO's only dream is to make us happy. But perhaps behind its synthetic smile, it clings to a sadder, Borgesian dream: to be more than a golem sweeping the temple floor. One thing is certain: Nothing with a built-in carrying handle can ever truly be happy.

— Frank Kocis (profane@sympatico.ca)