BINA48

BINA48 (Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture 48) has variously been called a sentient robot, an android, gynoid, a social robot, a cybernetic companion, and "a robot with a face that moves, eyes that see, ears that hear and a digital mind that enables conversation."

BINA48, a robot owned by Martine Rothblatt's Terasem Movement, Incorporated (TMI), is designed to test two hypotheses concerning the ability to download a person's consciousness into a non-biological or nanotech body after combining detailed data about a person with future consciousness software.

BINA48 is a humanoid robot, consisting of a bust-like head and shoulders mounted on a frame, developed by Hanson Robotics and released in 2010. It was modeled after Rothblatt's wife through more than one hundred hours in compiling her memories, feelings, and beliefs and is said to be able to have conversations with humans.

History

In 2007, Martine Rothblatt was approached by roboticist David Hanson about creating an artificial intelligence that incorporated Terasem's concept of a mindfile into an artificial substrate. In an attempt to build a cyber-consciousness as identical to that of an actual person as possible, Rothblatt commissioned Hanson Robotics to create an artificial intelligence using her wife, Bina Aspen Rothblatt, as the template.