Asimo, a humanoid robot manufactured by Honda
We recently visited the Miraikan, prior to the mounting of the Terminator exhibition and took the above photo. The Miraikan ordinarily possesses a good collection of robots and robotoids anyway, so this special exhibition ought to be good.
Tom Baker / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
The Terminator characters played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in popular movies in 1984, 1991 and 2003 may look human on the outside, but eventually their flesh is peeled away and you see something different: They are actually menacing, skeletonoid robots.
Similarly, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, also known as the Miraikan, in Koto Ward, Tokyo, may look like a science museum on the outside, but if you visit before June 28 you will see something different: It is hosting a promotional exhibition for Terminator Salvation, a new film that opens in Japan on June 13. The event is more about art than science.
The tone is set when you enter through a dark gallery full of gleaming robot heads with glowing red eyes, then come face-to-face with a full-size chrome skeleton of a gun-toting T-800 robot from the Terminator 2 movie standing amid urban rubble from which theatrical puffs of smoke arise every few minutes.
The concept behind the movies is that robots take over the world after a future nuclear war, and that a human hero named John Connor becomes their most effective adversary. In each film so far, time-traveling assassin ‘bots have come to the present day to try to keep the future hero from being born or growing up.
The full-size humanoid skeletons of several such robots are on display, including one belonging to the curvaceous female T-X robot from Terminator 3 and another of a bulkier model introduced in the newest movie, the T-600, which is two meters tall.
While most of the robots are humanoid, some radical new designs are also on display. The most striking of these, simply as a piece of art, is a Terminator robot that is melded with a motorcycle.
If a centaur is the upper body of a man on the front end of a horse, then the Moto-Terminator strikes an opposite balance: The robot rider has gone into such a deep (and permanent) crouch that its upper body has all but vanished into the motorcycle, while its pelvis and thighs, hovering over the rear tire, are the most immediately recognizable anatomical parts. The machine has no face, but there are tiny red headlights approximately where its eyes might have been. Built on a Ducati motorcycle base, it combines organic and mechanical shapes in a way that looks inspired by H.R. Giger. It is exquisitely creepy.
Other items in the show include costumes, sketches and paintings from the new movie, including an eerie scene of used nuclear missile silos with their lids standing open, crumbling and becoming overrun with vines.
Many of the special effects were achieved with sophisticated puppetry. For instance, there is a realistic life-sized model of Schwarzenegger’s head that was used in a scene in the first film in which he gouges out his own damaged eye. There are even some life-sized, full-body puppets of the actor (now California’s governor) from different movies. Such puppets couldn’t be reused from film to film, because he had aged between them, and they had to match his appearance perfectly.
The items mostly speak for themselves, but visitors can also watch videos in which special effects artists explain their work in English.
In the real world, the U.S. military now has combat robots in the form of flying killer drones and remote-controlled rifles that move about on tanklike treads. None of these are included in the Terminator show–too real for comfort?–although there is one Hollywood robot, the hulking T-1, that looks like the missing link between a modern self-propelled firearm and the humanoid monsters of the movies.
However, the final room of the show does present some real-life technology from the civilian robotics world. (Explanations in this section are only in Japanese.) This includes the long-haired, life-sized and unsettlingly lifelike Actroid recently unveiled by Kokoro, the robotics division of Sanrio.
In addition to watching her move, speak and change her facial expressions, you can even touch a sample of her pale, thick, resilient, room-temperature skin. And then you’ll know what the future feels like.
“Terminator Exhibition,” in Japanese and English, runs through June 28 at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan), a four-minute walk from Telecom Center Station on the Yurikamome Line in Koto Ward, Tokyo. Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (until 6 p.m. on May 2-6). Last admission 30 minutes before closing. Closed on Tuesdays, except May 5. Admission, which includes the Miraikan’s permanent exhibits, is 1,200 yen for adults, 500 yen for those 18 and under, and free for primary school students and younger. For details, visit www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/spevent/terminator/.
Related article: Mind power alone can now operate Asimo (Yomiuri Shimbun 3 Apr 2009)
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