Genius: Two Birds With One Stone

Problem 1: NASA needs an “ethnic female” robot:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=34482

NASA/DFRC has a requirement for (quantity 2) Interactive Robot Characters with accessories.

The specifications are: Two different interactive robot chadd additional comfort to a more diverse audience racters will be required for usage with the varied targeted audiences. One male “wise-looking” robot such will be suitable for all audiences whereby a female of somewhat ethnic background may add additional comfort to a more diverse audience or when wanting a female to speak at an all female event.

Problem 2: NASA needs Muslim Outreach (although the White House is backing away from that, and basically calling NASA Admin Bolden a liar).

Now, I’ve seen robots that are made to look like humans. So far, they kinda suck. They’re not even at Uncanny Valley yet… just “overpriced sex doll valley.” The supposed purpose of the ethnic female robot is to “add additional comfort to a more diverse audience.” And yet, I’ve never seen a humanoid bot that would “add comfort” to much of anything… at best they add confusion and awkwardness. They may be modeled to have an external rubber mask that can be quite humanlike, but as soon as they open their yap or start “emoting,” they just look wrong.

How to solve all these issues?

Easy! NASA just need to make the “ethnic female” robot into a fundamentalist Muslim ethnic female robot! Once it’s done up in that Ninja/Sith getup, the lack of any human-ness becomes moot.

Quick! Which one’s the robot? You can’t tell, can you. So, NASA, when you get yout “ethnic female robot,” and test runs show it to be pretty unimpressive, just throw a tarp over it and cut some eyeholes (or not), and you’ll be good to go!

See? They’re even giving drivers licences to Terminators these days:

This is exactly the sort of thinking that NASA doesn’t seem to have these days. If they’d just hire me (I’d be a cheap consultant, no more thant $150/hour), I could solve *all* their problems for ’em.