Couple Married By Robot In Tokyo:I-Fairy Satoko Inoue Tomohiro Shibata Wedding

Couple Married By Robot In Tokyo:I-Fairy Satoko Inoue Tomohiro Shibata Wedding – A Tokyo couple was recently married by a robot. The bride walked down the aisle in her white gown, and was joined at the front of the event by the groom. The nuptials at the ceremony were led by “I-Fairy,” a four foot tall seated robot with flashing eyes and plastic pigtails. The wedding on Sunday was the first recorded time that a wedding had ever been led by a robot, according to the manufacturer of the robot, Kokoro Co.
“Please lift the bride’s veil,” the robot said in its awkward voice, waving its arms in the air as the couple kissed in front of nearly 50 guests who were in attendence.

“This was a lot of fun. I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends. Those in the robot industry mostly understand this, but people mainly want robots near them that serve some purpose,” said bride Satoko Inoue, 36, who works at manufacturer Kokoro.

The I-Fairy sells for around $68,000, or 6.3 million yen. Three are currently in use in Singapore, the U.S. and Japan, according to a spokeswoman for the company. The robot boasts up to 18 degrees of motion in its arms, and repeats preprogrammed movements and sounds. The robot is capable of learning on its own, but mostly runs off of code that was planted in the brain of the robot during manufacturing.
“It would be nice if the robot was a bit more clever, but she is very good at expressing herself,” said new husband Tomohiro Shibata, 42, a professor of robotics at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in central Japan.

Category: Asia News