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rfmcdonaldAs someone who liked the manga version of Ghost in the Shell, Jeremy Hsu's blog post at Discover's Lovesick Cyborg intrigues me.
A Japanese anime film that strongly influenced Hollywood films such as “The Matrix” has more recently inspired a real-life research effort dedicated to creating futuristic technologies. The “Ghost in the Shell” anime imagined a special law enforcement unit that employs cyborgs, robots and hackers to fight cyber criminals in 2029. That science fiction setting remains more than a decade away, but Japan’s Ghost in the Shell Realize Project has begun unveiling research initiatives based on the film’s vision of giant spider-like robots and “cyber protection suits” with some form of artificial strength for humans.
The Ghost in the Shell in the Shell Realize Project officially began in 2014, according to a roundup of Japanese news sources by Kotaku. This year, the project held a small competition and award ceremony that highlighted ideas such as the cyber protection suit. It also announced two new initiatives aimed at recreating the anime’s iconic Tachikomas, giant spider-like robots that can either walk or roll on wheels attached to their legs. One initiative by the company Cerevo aims to create smartphone-controlled toy robots that can walk on four legs or roll for sale toward the end of 2017, according to the website Crunchyroll. The other initiative by Amauchi Industry and Karakuri Products aims to build a much larger industrial robot version of the Tachikomas by the end of March 2018.
The Ghost in the Shell Realize Project is not the first to mine the realm of science fiction for real-world technologies. The U.S. military has launched a number of research projects inspired by the technologies of science fiction stories such as the “Star Wars” films. An informal survey by the scientific search engine startup Sparrho also showed how often references to science fiction films appear in research papers: a possible indication of science fiction’s influence.
