Ibn Sina Robot is joining Facebook, seeks friends
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 6th 2009 5:05AM
posted May 6th 2009 5:05AM
Named for a medical doctor, the Ibn Sina Robot (pictured, scowling at a meat-bag) wants to shed his scholarly ways and you know, hang out, make friends, have a bit of fun. The prototype robot is based on a PeopleBot machine from ActivRobots. It features face recognition and language modules that allow it to carry on real-time conversations with its database of friends. The plan is to put the bot on Facebook where according to the BBC: The page will be populated with interactions the robot has with people as well as photos of the time it spends in human company. Its creators hope that embedding it in a social web will give rise to a sustainable friendship can grow up between man and machine.See, Dr. Nikolaus Mavridis and his co-researchers are hoping that they'll learn to overcome people's reluctance to interact with robots. Hey doctor, here's a hint: try giving your robot a less menacing expression -- perhaps make it female even, with big doeful eyes and a taste for short mini-skirts. Then your robot will have more "friends" looking to interact than she'll know what to do with.
Sounds to me like Thomas Ricker has a thing for female robots.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/26/wakamarus-latest-gig-distraught-thespian-clothes-rack/
Yeh I gotta get me some Arab robot. lol
ibn sina is a persian philosopher not arab idiot
Uh nope. Persians are Arabic. In fact, the country of Saudi Arabia used to be called Persia. That's why it's customary to refer to Iranians as both Persians and Arabics interchangeably if you're an outsider.
@gary, actually it's Iran that was previously known as Persia. And their main language is Persian, not Arabic. In fact, Arabic speakers in Iran only make up around 1%.
@Str1ker
eh. I was just being a really really bad troll to piss off the dude above me. Although I just made up the land of Persia, didn't even know it once existed as a country.
didn't the Japanese already made one, or two, to interact with the public a few months back?
Thomas, why do you dislike Arabots? What have they done to you?
Arabots lol. I , for one, am scared of the Arabot overlords
Ibn Sina is actually Persian, not Arab...
Okay, Persibots.
It looks like one of the three wise men.
You need prab..eh...persiabots to do battle with the infidelbots of the future.
Did that thing travel from past, or future?
Cuz he looks kinda old and vintage to me, but since it is a robot, probably...
help me.
Silence ! I kill you !
Osama bot Laden
Hmm... calling Ibn Sina a medical doctor is kinda like calling Leonardo Da Vinci a draftsmen.
Ibn Sina is also known by the anglicised name Avicenna. Now if you're a student of medicine you'll know that Avicenna is regarded as the father of modern medicine and clinical pharmacology and also regarded for laying the foundations of systematic experimentation- so you can probably see why the creators of the robot named him after him.
Not only was he accomplished in the medical field, he was also a polymath... like Da Vinci.
Exactly.
Also (and I'm just guessing this by looking at the photo of his robot doppelganger), he grew a mean beard and wore a dishcloth on his head.
That he did squire, that he did!
On a more topical note, he also realised the contagious nature of certain diseases and as such introduced quarantining as a method to inhibit dissemination of various nefarious bugs.... so we can thank him for not getting swine flu :) Although if the media are to be believed it's only a matter of time!
I don't know which near dystopian future I prefer... being wiped out by a slightly more stronger version of man-flu, or being enslaved by our robot overlords modelled on a guy that was trying to do good for humanity!
This is not An ARAB, Dr Ibne Sina was a Persian, He changed the medicine science since then and he was the leader in medicine.
he was one of the most famous Persians around world.
please just don't mix Persian ( Iranians ) with Arabs ( other countries )
What are you talking about? Ibn Sina was Arab, born and lived in Iraq/Syria.
mr absyon that time syria(and many other arab countries) was in iran.
baram jalebe cheghad khanande irani injas
I for one, enjoy Thomas's original headline:
ibn-sina-robot-wants-a-facebook-page-seen-sexting
A bit over the line? Maybe, but hilarious.
no we should named it "james mother is a whore"
can he give prescriptions?
just what we need to convince people that robots are good.... one that looks like a terrorist and is featured with an angry face
And Mario looks like Saddam Hussein.
Good God Almighty! Who in their right mind wants to interact with a robot that looks like a recruiter for the Taliban!
Maybe they want people to get rid of that "beard/headgear = terrorist" mentality a lot of stupid people seem to have.
It actually looks more like Jesus who was (gasp) NOT WHITE
I actually had a chance to interact with this briefly. I put a quarter in his chest, and made a wish. When I woke up the next morning, I was a fully grown man instead of a 12 year old boy.
I think he was called Zoltan back then.
hahahaha nice
kiddies on here won't get it though :(
Typical... folish nubs ranking him up.
Salam is malas spelled backwards...
Terrorist name... I can smell them anywhere
USA #1
Shame its against Facebook's terms of use then.
Schweppes, you are such a troll. USA #25!
"pictured, scowling at a meat bag" ... I giggled for 10 minutes
Ibn Sina wasn't a Arab .
He was a great Iranian (Persian) Scholar .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna
Are you kidding me with this crap?
"sustainable friendship can grow up between man and machine"
NOT IN MY LIFETIME BUDDY! I will not let you persuade me in to thinking that robots are friendly. Those evil things, those nasty creatures you people keep calling "human like" are nothing but machines, yes I said it machines, dishwashers,.
I will not be friends with any machine, yes I kiss and hug my '91 325is and yes she might be my secret lover but I aint friend to her.
I agree. as an Arab I found so many of the comments here offensive. but guess I have no room to speak, since I'm a "terrorist" and all that..
Yep.
Look into a mirror, buttheads.
I don't happen to think it's the fault of the designer to model the traditional clothing of one of the world's biggest cultures, or to model a robot after one of the fathers of modern science.
It's rather the fault of whoever it is that made the word "arab" synonymous with "terrorism", and yes some of the blame falls on people like you who readily picked up the association, and couldn't accept the fact that there are other people on this world who are just dress and look different than you.
Compare the 9/11 VS bombings Hiroshima and Nagasaki ...
be honest and tell me who's the terrorist?
Compare occupation IRAQ and AFGHANSTAN VS occupation NOTHING?!
be honest and tell me who's the terrorist?
Compare Killing Peoples with American Weapons VS pombing people with American pombs materials?
be honest and tell me who's the terrorist?
P.S. if all of your answers were somthing other than USA then your supporting the land of free Terrorism the USA!
Compare The USA civilization VS the Islamic/Arabs civilization and read hsitory and be honest and tell me who kills more? who last more?
If your answer is USA then you dont read... go back to your library and search and read well.
Day for you and Day on you USA!
Thanks for non-respecting non-american peoples!
^It's obviously really. You just need to think for yourself, rather than have someone think for you.
@Joe Shmoe
Are you talking about the Bani Qurayzah? They back stabbed the muslims, and set them up for destruction at the battle of the trench, resulting in 10,000 of Abu Sufyan's soldiers versus 3000 muslims, who were not all soldiers, but farmers, laborers and everyday men. Surprisingly the Muslims overcame these odds. Before this the Bani Qurayzah where living in peace, they brought their own doom.
@Joe
The best part is how you justify the death of 80,000 innocents with a stupid saying "awake a sleeping giant"
Ibn Sina was neither Arab, nor Persian. In his time people didn't associate themselves with a particular ethnic group. He was a Muslim. That's true and that's how it should be.
If you say he was a Persian, he has a non-Persian name. Arabs use ibn and Persians don't. If you look at the time he lived in, it was during the Samanids who were Persian and later Ghaznevids who were Turks. He mostly wrote in Arabic, although was fluent both in Arabic and Persian.
But what's more interesting is that his hometown Afshona near Bukhara is in Uzbekistan. Would that make him a Uzbek?:)
Leave the guy alone, dear Arabs and Iranians. He is a Muslim and that's how we should perceive him.
"If you say he was a Persian, he has a non-Persian name. Arabs use ibn and Persians don't."
Persia, after Islam, was under heavy influence of Muslims/Arabs (as we still are) you're partially right about his name. but you forget the fact that he lived and died in Hamedan City, now in central Iran.
And dear readers, it's really shameful to label someone like this great scholar "terrorist" who has done valuable contributions to the medical science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna