Just a Thought: BJD Persocoms?

Haha, I would love something like this. The second large scale doll I have planned is basically a doll version of a robot I have in an online game, which does various things like play music in your room, provide item storage, greet and thank people who visit your shop with messages you type in yourself, and can be invited to help in battle if you're short on human players.

So yeah... while I wouldn't do something like this with an original character doll, I would totally be up for it when it comes to this specific doll I have planned, cause it'd be a like a real life version of what he is. XD

 

But right there, what you describe, does suggest what kind of personality they would have which is tied into a character's thoughts, feelings, and opinions. The kind of things that doll owners give their doll would instead be handled by computer programmers. Even if those features where to be somewhat customizable, I doubt it would be customizable enough to be able to capture what I do with my dolls now. I would personally hate having a doll whose voice and mannerisms did not match the character I had in mind. And the voice--I know what my characters sound like, and I don't think they would be likely to match anything that came with a doll/robot (a dollbot? lol). Programmed repetitive phrases also would take away from any realism.

To me this isn't an issue about whether or not it's possible to do--I think eventually someone could come up with something similar to what you suggest, but I think it's something separate from this hobby and these dolls. I can understand people thinking 'wow, that's really neat!', but I just don't see any appeal personally. Character development is my very favorite part of this hobby, and anything that would interfere with that, isn't something that I would look upon too kindly. It goes back to the same reason that I prefer books to movies--at the end of the day, nothing beats my own imagination.

 

Why not! I think it would be awesome!
There's so many toys out there for kids that can walk on their own, so why not in a doll?

I would for sure be interested in the mechanics if they ever came avaiable

 

It's an interesting concept, and I was actually thinking about it when I ordered my Puki Pipi.

But, branching off from your Chobits Idea and going a few years back in the actual series, I think the idea of Angelic Layer would be awesome!

For those who aren't familiar with Angelic Layer, it's another series by CLAMP that comes a few years before Chobits, and it's about a sport/hobby/game where people battle with fully customizable dolls called Angels that are controlled with the users mind by the use of special headgear. It's a pretty good series acutally. But anywho, I always thought that would be such a fun concept! I mean, mind controlling a doll to fight another one is pretty farfetched and not going to happen anytime soon, but they're developing prosthetics that one can opereate with the electrons in the muscles and brain, so why not use that technology for recreational use? It's just a thought.

 

Sweet That would be so awesome!

 

My boyfriend and I talked about this last night. He said that my puki would probably be way to small to mechanize, but that perhaps a larger doll could work. He estimated materials alone would run over$1000 though, and you'd still need someone to design it and install it. And that would just to make it move. To make it talk/remember things, I couldn't even begin to guess.

 

Considering Chobits was an ecchi shounen anime, the only thing I can come up with for the BJDs to do is be love dolls, considering most of the robots out there are female anyways.

If they did come out with them I highly doubt it would be anything normal BJD owners would want.

 

Neat idea! A few weeks ago I was actually talking about what it would be like to have a Persocom.
I'd be tickled pink if my baby boy was one.. ~

 

I personally wouldn't want one. And do I think this is very realistic? Not really xD That's why the idea came from a manga. This would require very high-tech stuff, and I can only imagine how much something like that would cost. Probably a fortune. You're talking about a robot that expresses human emotions that can move around and function independently. It's certainly an interesting idea, but way beyond our generation and possibly some to come.

And I know when my doll arrives I'll be able to see his personality without him actually expressing it. That's part of the fun, imagining the voice and the actions :'D

 

Love theidea! And it is deffinately possible, even today, with enough drive, anybody with little experience could buy and gut a kids toy 'humanoid' robot and transplant the mechanics into a doll - obviously you'd have to be careful about the fit, but if you made the doll as well it wouldn't be to hard... Then again, i would only ever get anough motivation to gut a Furby - so my BJDs would only ever aimlessly 'talk' toeach other and ask for food.... which is pretty much what they do now ><;

 

I've wanted a doll like in Angelic Layer or a Laptop model in Persicoms. I thought it would be neat. But yea personality wise it would seem artificial because with todays technology we are kinda limited. But one day ABJD Angelic Layer!

 

i have thought about this and yes i'd love it

 

That's a great idea!
It was first thought when I've seen first dollfie (nude one ) "Damn! It looks like perocom from chobits " and I thing group CLAMP take pattern from BJD

 

Although the idea may seem enticing, i don't think it would be the best of ideas- To use Chobits itself as an example- too many people got emotionally connected with there Persocoms- and they experienced a great deal of suffering due to it- sure some of them ended up with happy endings, but it could also end up with some people forsaking human relationships in favor of robotic ones- with programs which they could control , making it completely impossible for them to function in society.
the idea itself is good in theory, but the unforeseen side effects could be more problematic than the sheer cuteness of a robot which could mimic human behavior.

 

Hells yes! Chobits incited me to create an entirely new and unrequited deviant fetish. Ive actually considered sculpting a BJD with internal mechanisms in mind, just for giggles... not for any particular purpose, as you have suggested. I would totally carry around a PongPong with a chirpy little personality and the ability to remind me that I have an appointment. Actually I would pay a lot of money for that. *L*

But only if it obeyed Asimov's Laws of Robotics. No freaky PongPong permasmile inching up over my bedside accompanied by a meat cleaver, thankyouverymuch.

 

I would absolutely DIE of happiness and sell my kidney for a few.
Ever since watching Chobits, I've wanted a Persocom SO BAD DX
HURRY UP, TECHNOLOGY!

 

What about tweaking one of the Popular Science tutorials for putting things like Ipods and Computers in unusual housings? It wouldn't be able to move on it's own, but depending on what you used, they would be able to tell you your appointments, play music and make calls... There's all sorts of neat bits of software out there, once you have the basic hardware installed...

 

I think that's a very interesting idea, but wouldn't it kind of defeat the idea of customization, if every doll like that were to come with a pre-programmed personality exactly like all the others out there? One of my favorite parts of the BJD hobby is to give the doll their own personality and style. On the other hand, if the computers were set up so that you could specifically customize the personality yourself, you could take the customization to another level. I'm not saying like, they give you a list of pre-programmed responses and you pick whick ones you want them to say. I mean for them to give instructions on how to fully customize the voice reaction phase yourself. But the again, wouldn't that kind of ruin the analog, unsaid beauty and simplicity in something already so uniquely complex??...woah. that's really a good one. thanks for the brain food, Wings223.

 

unless we used a type of technology like the little japanese harp seal.. paro? i think thats his name. hes programmed to learn though various sensors he has (ie light, touch, etc) and he is programmed in such a way that when he preforms an action you dont like, you "hit" him and eventually he learns that you do not like the action and stops doing it. but if he does something you like you pet and snuggle him and he learns that its a good thing. kind of like a mechanical pupply...seal... thing. anyways i think bjd persocoms would definately be interesting, and no to mention helpful, though there will always be those radical people saying theyll be the end of human kind, which they might very well be....

 

Depending on how complex your interface was, making it talk & remember things might be much cheaper and easier than making it move, since you could cannibalise parts from existing things that do so now (cellphones, PDAs, etc.) and you would only have to design and build the interface. Heck, if you cut a little rectangle out of the doll's belly (a la teletubbies, haha) you could stick a handheld device right in some dolls, and with some work you could make it more elegant.


I think the only thing that's keeping it from happening is lack of interest--the technology exists. But as this thread (and the meme we had a while back on the same topic) shows, not all BJD owners want dolls that can remind them of appointments or sing a little pre-recorded or downloaded song as an alarm in the morning. And the expense, while I think it could be kept down by using existing technology, would be kinda steep for just a few dolls. But...it could happen, and if you really want it, I'm sure you can find someone to make it work.

A couple of people have brought up the fact that this idea is coming from manga, and while it's certainly true that the kind of beautiful, human-sized robots with amazing lifelike bodies and massive computing power are outside our current technology, the essential concept really isn't. You can get USB drives in all sorts of cute shapes, fun sleeves for your MP3 player that look like characters...the only thing stopping these products from being housed in articulated resin is lack of a market, haha.

On the other hand, though, I really doubt that some of the things fiction talks about would come to pass. Chobits did paint a picture of a society where some people were so dependent on their human-like persocoms that they could no longer function in human-only society. But it's my opinion, having known a few shut-ins (heck, I myself spend more time knitting and posting on forums than out socialising face-to-face), that most of the people who end up spending more time with a hobby than with people would do the same even if the hobby were removed. That is, the same people who, in the Chobits universe, were obsessed with their persocoms are, in our universe, spending time with their laptops or their cats or their action figures or their model cars or whatever anyway. So I just don't think that, were BJDs to develop the capacity to compute or computers to develop beautiful ABJD-aesthetic-y shells, society would change significantly.


As to whether or not I would want one, well, I might want one, but I wouldn't want all my dolls to be like that. I would be most interested in something with about the complexity of a cellphone, that could set alarms and give reminders of important events and not much more. Maybe play a game (I'm imagining tetris, where the screen is in the doll's belly and you move the hands to shift or turn the blocks, haha). It would be super cute to have a Yo-sized doll that sang a little song to me every morning instead of my phone. But most of my dolls I have/want because of their characters, and I wouldn't want to try and fit them into one of the three pre-fabricated "personalities" my ABJPersocom came with, nor do I want or need twelve electronic calendars to keep track of my busy life, so I'll be quite happy if things continue the way they are now.