Harish Palaniappan's

You would have heard about 'Amazing Amanda' if you are a regular at online news websites, or, if you lived in or around New York.

'Amazing Amanda' is a toy which has become popular of the types seen on films which show toys mimicking human intelligence..

But amanda is not a toy which has a self-learning super-computer processor or something like in films to take over humans someday. Neither is it a costly affair like Sony's robotic dog 'Aibo' or the likes of japanese robot guards.

What interested me about this doll Amanda was not that it was affordable, or looked cute, but it was the simplicity in its technique... and the feeling that I can create one like it.
Note,You would probably understand this only if you were an Electronics engineer like me (atlast something i understand becos i did that engineering thing.. )

Tech things about 'Amanda'
Radio frequency tags in Amanda's accessories(yea you got to buy these also for this feature to work..:o) - including toy food, potty and clothing - wirelessly inform the doll of what it is interacting with. For instance, if the doll asks for a spoon of peas and it is given its plastic cookie, it will gently admonish its caregiver, telling her that a cookie is not peas.

By asking a child to repeat "Amanda" several times, the doll quickly comes to recognize and store in its electronic memory that child's voice, and only that child's voice, as its "mommy." Other voices are greeted with Amanda's cautionary proclamation, "You don't sound like Mommy."

Normal things about 'Amanda'
A normal tech guy can easily think this is mimicking and simple, and that it doesn't reflect how humans do things. I accept that the human brain is a complex network and there are many ways things are processed in it which we can't mimick with technology just yet,.. but these are the basics how even a human child recognizes its mommy, by her voice, by her skin, by her body temperature, or by her looks.

Somethings about technology implementation cannot be disgraded as 'Just a mimick' and 'That's not how our brain is'. I feel, we are not far from seeing things like in the movie 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) of spielberg'.

We might get to make a species with robots.