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Gynoid (from Greek gynēka - woman) is a term used to describe a robot designed to look like a human female, as compared to an android modeled after a male. The term is not common, however, with android often being used to refer to both "genders" of robot. The portmanteaus fembot (female robot) and feminoid (female android) have also been used; the latter sparingly. Gynoid was first used in the writings of British science fiction author Gwyneth Jones and later by Richard Calder.
Early concepts From 600 BC onward legends of talking bronze and clay statues coming to life have been a regular occurrence in the works of classical authors such as: Homer, Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, and Pliny. In Book 18 of the Iliad, Hephaestus the god of all mechanical arts, was assisted by two moving female statues made from gold - "living young damsels, filled with minds and wisdoms". Another legend has Hephaestus being commanded by Zeus to create the first woman, Pandora, from out of clay. The myth of Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, tells of a lonely man who sculpted his ideal woman from ivory, Galatea, and then promptly fell in love with her after the goddess Aphrodite brings her to life. Variations on this recurrent theme of loving an artificial creation appear in E.T.A. Hoffmann's gothic short story Der Sandmann (1817) in which the love object is the automaton Olympia, in Léo Delibes' ballet Coppélia (1870) where it is the eponymous dancing doll, and in countless recent science fiction films and novels. Since the Renaissance, inventors began considering machines for more realistic yet aesthetic purposes. In 1540, Italian inventor Gianello Torriano of Cremona made automata for the amusement of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, including a life-sized girl plucking a lute. The girl could walk in straight lines or circles and tilt her head. It still exists and now resides in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. During the 1640s, the French philosopher René Descartes is reputed to have traveled with an artificial female companion called Francine, named after his daughter. Austrian Friedrich von Knauss developed a "writing doll" in 1760 capable of writing up to 107 words through dictation. By 1773, the Jaquet-Droz brothers in France had developed a series of life-like mechanical puppets which included a sixteen year old female musician. The musician played a piano with fingers on the appropriate keys and was designed to simulate breathing as well as turn her head sideways and bow at the end of each performance. Mechanist Les Maillardet is credited in inspiring the invention of "The Philadelphia Doll" (1812) which was capable of writing in English and French and drew landscapes. In 1823, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel had manufactured a doll that could state "Ma-ma" and "Pa-pa". By 1891, Thomas Edison developed this work further by patenting his Talking Doll, utilising a wax cylinder that recited "Mary Had a Little Lamb", based on Maelzel's earlier idea. Initially to advertise his phonograph, more than 500 were produced. Modern developments The industrial revolution and in particular since World War II, the development of cybernetics and the concept of artificial intelligence led to more complex ideas of robots and androids. Whereas robots in the past have performed routine and mundane tasks, a fully independent gynoid has yet to be developed. Prototype gynoids are the Actroids, including Repliee R1 (resembling a little girl) and its successors Repliee Q1 and Repliee Q2. Role of gynoids in science fiction Science fiction storytellers have widely used humanoid robots, sometimes as part of the look and feel of their fictional worlds, but often so as invite the audience to react to the robot character as if it were human. Stories using androids can explore issues such as what it means to be human. At what point do androids become so human-like that they deserve the rights that society grants to humans? For example, Philip K. Dick's novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was adapted into the film, Blade Runner), deals with a world in which androids are so realistic that only special equipment can distinguish them from humans. However, androids are treated as inferior to humans. The action revolves around a bounty hunter employed to track down escaped androids who are masquerading as humans. Stories that specifically need gynoids (as opposed to genderless humanoid robots) often invite the audience to consider issues of gender relations and gender roles. Many fictional gynoids are made to resemble attractive young women, bringing issues of romance and sexual relations into play. For example, should societies approve or tolerate gynoids being owned by male humans as sex toys or sex slaves (and by extension, how does this reflect on the treatment of human females by their males)? Stories such as the The Stepford Wives, Weird Science, and Chobits have dealt thoughtfully with these issues. See also Sex in science fiction. Fembot In fiction, the term Fembot (sometimes spelled Femmebot) is used as an alternative name for a gynoid who is designed to look like a woman. The term has been used in two major productions: The Bionic Woman television series and the Austin Powers film series, which parodied the name. The television show Futurama also used the word fembot, as did the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fans of the line of toys and related fiction occasionally use the term to refer to Female Transformers. It was used once in the Transformers Beast Wars cartoon series. The original fembots In The Bionic Woman, the Fembots were a line of powerful life-like androids that Jaime Sommers fought in two multi-part episodes of the series: "Kill Oscar" (with help from Steve Austin) and "Fembots in Las Vegas". Despite the feminine prefix, there were also male versions, including some designed to impersonate particular individuals for the purpose of infiltration. While not truly artificially intelligent, the fembots still had extremely sophisticated programming that allowed them to pass for human in most situations. Oftentimes however, their "facemasks" would be dislodged to reveal the machine's internal facial mechanism and circuitry, creating the classic inhuman image of the menace. In the show, the fembots' primary weakness was that their default operational setting produced a unique high pitched sound that only Jaimie (with her bionic ear) could hear. This allowed her to detect their presence. However, once the fembot's operator was aware of this, the operational 'frequency' of the fembot could be changed and the sound thus eliminated. Fembots on important missions were often remotely controlled by an operator back at the base who was able to see and hear everything through the machine. The fembots could also be discovered because of their heavier than usual weight - more than twice what a similar sized human would weigh. Steve Austin once discovered that Oscar Goldman had been replaced by a "male fembot" by tossing a pencil on the carpet between them. When the Goldman fembot unwittingly stepped on the pencil, it got crushed into tiny pieces. When the bionic heroes faced the machines in battle, their operator at the base could increase their strength and make them extremely formidable foes. See also List of fictional gynoids and female cyborgs Further reading See also | ||||||||
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