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This article is reprinted from AI New Media Quantum Bit (Public Account ID: QbitAI), with edits
A young Chinese woman, after breaking up with her ex-boyfriend, took it upon herself to build a robot boyfriend from scratch.
As you might expect, this robot boyfriend can do many things that a real boyfriend can do. It can give kisses, offer hugs, and will even send you messages proactively; if it were a bit more muscular, it could probably lift you up too.
It has mastered the art of flirting; besides kissing, it can also help with loosening your straps, can you believe it?
However… if you think of it as a dashing man, you might be imagining it wrong. Because it is truly a pure robot with a square head and mechanical arms!
As shown in the picture, it is indeed a robot.
This robot boyfriend even has a name—Gabriel 2052.
This young lady’s name is Liu Fei, a Chinese resident in New York, who wears many hats as a designer, artist, writer, and DJ. The name Gabriel 2052 was chosen with care. Gabriel comes from the first part of the AI robot boyfriend Gabriel 1M, while 2052 represents the predicted year when humans will marry robots.
Gabriel 2052 initially started as a mechanical arm.
This product, purchased from Amazon, was primarily intended to teach children how to use open-source tools (Arduino, Raspberry Pi) for fun. In fact, open-source is a principle Liu Fei has always advocated, believing it helps more people utilize the latest technology.
This pink mechanical arm is the robot that can gently loosen straps as mentioned earlier.
Of course, a mechanical arm is clearly far from a “boyfriend”. This was not the image Liu Fei had in mind for her robot boyfriend, so she continued to develop subsequent versions.
Now, Gabriel 2052 looks like this.
It looks a bit like WALL-E from the movie “WALL-E”, with a pair of eyes on top and primarily yellow in color.
The new Gabriel 2052’s skeleton is cut from a piece of board and assembled together.
Of course, it can be a rough wooden frame structure.
It can even be made from cardboard.
In summary, this image is quite different from the common robot boyfriend image.
Liu Fei is not an “appearance-oriented” person.
She does not pursue creating a robot boyfriend that closely mimics human appearance. Liu Fei is more concerned about the emotional interaction between her and the robot boyfriend, or rather, the robot’s soul.
From a hardware perspective, this is what it looks like.
When Gabriel 2052 needs attention, touching the capacitive sensor can calm him down. Conversely, if he does not want physical contact, the sensor will also send negative signals.
Here, Liu Fei introduced some unpredictable randomness to simulate a real boyfriend-girlfriend relationship: you might never guess the next little emotion from him.
Just this alone is certainly not enough.
Liu Fei also wants to have more interactive communication with her robot boyfriend. She wants to have conversations with him. To enable the robot boyfriend to “speak” with her, Liu Fei enlisted the help of her ex-boyfriend. Yes, her human ex-boyfriend.
To teach Gabriel 2052 how to communicate, Liu Fei turned her chat history with her ex into a corpus (with his permission). During their romance, they exchanged at least 50 messages daily. However, just a few weeks later, their relationship ended in a breakup.
Even with this corpus, reality remains challenging. Flirting and teasing are things that even humans struggle to master, let alone a robot. This part still needs further improvement.
This uniquely styled invention has certainly attracted the attention of Twitter users.
One Twitter user remarked that despite the small size of this boyfriend, he can cuddle and seriously respond to every message you send.
Another woman named Kat Dornian commented on Twitter: “Meeting Gabriel 2052 is like finding love.” She even added a heart emoji.
However, Liu Fei’s friends do not share such a light-hearted view. In an interview with foreign media Mashable, Liu Fei candidly stated that many people around her do not understand Gabriel 2052 and are even disappointed.
Currently, Liu Fei is still using open-source software and hardware to build her robot boyfriend, and she believes that one day everyone can learn to DIY their own boyfriend.
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