BINA48 connects to the Internet and is said to be able to hold a discussion on a range of topics from politics to religion to future technologies. It has thirty-two facial motors under a skin-like rubber. Though without a complete body, the head-and-shoulder robotics express sixty-four different facial gestures. In an interview with Andrew Stein of the Addison County Independent, a local Vermont newspaper, Bruce Duncan of Terasem Movement Foundation explained that BINA48 was commissioned to "test the feasibility of transferring consciousness from a human to a biological or technological body". Duncan elaborated, "1. An imprint of a person's consciousness can be created in a digital form, called a 'mindfile', by collecting detailed information about that person. That information can then be expressed in a future, not-yet-created type of software, called 'mindware'. 2. That same imprint of a person's consciousness can be placed in a biological or technological body to provide life experiences comparable to those of a typically birthed human." BINA48 is an early test of these two hypotheses. As Duncan explained, "BINA48 was created … (as) an early demonstration of the transfer of information from a human being to a computer." BINA48's mindfile consists of Bina Rothblatt's information (hypothesis one) and this glimpse of Rothblatt's consciousness is expressed in limited terms by the android body BINA48 (hypothesis two).

Product:

• Country: USA 
• Company: Hanson Robotics