by Fumei Shirokuro
In the beginning I said that in the ‘80’s a lot of different kind of robots were introduced to the world. A lot of them are introduced through television series, while we also got to know a few from movies.
Let me start with the most famous one. Who doesn’t know The Terminator? The Terminator is a Cyborg who travels back in time to kill Sarah Connor. The reason behind this is to make sure that the robots will win in the future, since Sarah’s unborn son will put up a revolution against the robots.
But what is the movie scenes with robots that look like humans? Why not create robots that look like robots. Well in Short Circuit we got to know with Johnny Five. A robot which was built for the U.S. military to fight in the Cold War. Short Circuit is about how Johnny Five is one of the robots who ‘escapes’ the military. He’s been found by a animal-lover who thinks that Johnny Five is an extraterrestrial visitor. Because of the animal-lover gives Johnny Five access to books, television and other stimuli. Through this Johnny develops a whimsical and curious personality.
Next up is Data! Lieutenant Commander Data is an android from the series Star Trek. Even though Star Trek is a series that debuted in the ‘60’s, only until mid ‘80’s. Lieutenant Commander Data is introduced. Data served as the second officer and chief operations officer aboard the starships USS Enterprise-D and USS Enterprise-E. During his life he tried to understand various aspects of human behavior. But because he’s an android he had troubles with understanding human emotions. Throughout the series this led to the creation of an emotion chip. This chip let to the point that Data could understand and feel human emotions.