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Darwin wrote:And 3P0 has to interact with humans on a regular basis. The smooth movement of battledroids could be considered 'creepy'. People who deal with droids a lot want droids to look and act like droids. There's a whole branch of psychology that deals with stuff like this.. how C3P0 is fine, but the droids in "I, Robot" were kind of freaky, because they looked more human, close enough to set off our wiggins about the bits that weren't.

Not to be so frank, but thinking like that's the stupid way around. It doesn't make any sense from an actual standpoint and looks more like random guessing.

No offence, it's just that nonsense like random guessing has always annoyed me in debates and discussions.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:

Darwin wrote:And 3P0 has to interact with humans on a regular basis. The smooth movement of battledroids could be considered 'creepy'. People who deal with droids a lot want droids to look and act like droids. There's a whole branch of psychology that deals with stuff like this.. how C3P0 is fine, but the droids in "I, Robot" were kind of freaky, because they looked more human, close enough to set off our wiggins about the bits that weren't.

Not to be so frank, but thinking like that's the stupid way around. It doesn't make any sense from an actual standpoint and looks more like random guessing.

No offence, it's just that nonsense like random guessing has always annoyed me in debates and discussions.

No, he's right. Google up "uncanny valley." This is almost certainly an instance where explaination follows on screen evidence instead of leading to it, but it makes complete sense. IRL C-3P0 moves around funny because they had to fit Anthony Daniels into a robot suit, but going by the SD.net philosophy there's an in universe reason why he's moved that way for decades without being fixed.

Keeping androids designed for diplomatic interactions harmless looking is a far better explaination than "no one ever got around to fixing it."

Sorry, its just the approach that strikes me as making shit up and dartboard guessing rather than actually thinking.

EDIT: Either that or thinking too hard.

Did you know that screen tests of the new CGI Yoda revealed that they should make him less realistic? People actually preferred a slightly less realistic Yoda, because they didn't want his movements to look too human. He had to look slightly puppetlike.

Translate this kind of preference to Star Wars and you can imagine that (especially in a universe where some people dislike droids) they would make a point of not letting droids move in an overly human-like fashion.

I thought it was more along that they occasionally deviated from the more accurate physical renderings of Yoda's clothes to make it look better ("Hollywood physics"), such making his robes billow out as he descended rather than more accurately shooting straight up.

but if they didnt want robots to be too human-like why not make them shaped like an r2 or r5 unit?


i think its just because he was thrown together from scrap, has been neglected since he stopped being anakin's, and has sand in his joints.

unbeataBULL wrote:

Actually, infantry are used to take and hold any sort of ground, not just cities, in fact that is the primary purpose of any military ground force, that hasn't changed in at least 6,000 years. Also, horses and mules are still being used today by the U.S. army, because: they can go where trucks can't, are cheap, and you don't have to worry about gas or vehicle maintenance or oil. While on the subject of military advancement your basic grunt 3,000 years ago and the grunt of today still carry pretty much the same weight of gear, though not neccessarily the same gear.

um, don't they use tanks to take and hold ground? infantry can be bombed from the air and from the ground with out effective retaliation. infantry always needs the support of some kind of anti-aircraft mechanism, i.e. laser targetting, sonar, etc.
a rocket launcher alone won't have that kind of equipment.

tanks have the advantage of greater mobility, greater protection, and greater firepower. aircraft have extreme speed and great fire power.

IMHO, WWII was the end of the infantry era. once bombing and tanks became common, infantry were just needed to secure the area.

of course the whole war of 'Nam was about securing areas, so that didn't help much

and you have to admit that they don't commonly use pack animals in the military (which was my point). how often do you see a guy on horse-back in the battle field?

Actually, tanks need the support of infantry more than infantry need the support of tanks, especially when an infantry man can just dig in or hide and the tank can't get him or use improvised explosives to destroy the tank ala sticky bombs, IEDs, and the Molotov cocktail, or the good old fasshioned grenade down the hatch. Aircraft may be able to kill infantry out in the open or bust a bunker but they can never take and hold ground or defeat infantry all on their own, as can be seen in WWII, Kosovo, Afganhistan, Iraq 1 and 2, and Vietnam.

avoidingthepo wrote:but if they didnt want robots to be too human-like why not make them shaped like an r2 or r5 unit?


i think its just because he was thrown together from scrap, has been neglected since he stopped being anakin's, and has sand in his joints.

3po isn't a mechanic he's an interpreter and diplomatic aid, he's probably supposed to be anthropomorphic enough to be relatively unobtrusive and to help facilitate interaction with humans but not so human-like so as to be creepy. Also, in ANH he's on a princess's diplomatic vessel sand-free in the service of the head of Alderaan's government, yet he still walks stiffly. What about the stiff movements of the protocol droid in TPM? Are we to believe that all protocol droids are built of scrap and have sand in their joints even when we see them on the ships of important people?

NRS Guardian wrote:

avoidingthepo wrote:but if they didnt want robots to be too human-like why not make them shaped like an r2 or r5 unit?


i think its just because he was thrown together from scrap, has been neglected since he stopped being anakin's, and has sand in his joints.

3po isn't a mechanic he's an interpreter and diplomatic aid, he's probably supposed to be anthropomorphic enough to be relatively unobtrusive and to help facilitate interaction with humans but not so human-like so as to be creepy. Also, in ANH he's on a princess's diplomatic vessel sand-free in the service of the head of Alderaan's government, yet he still walks stiffly. What about the stiff movements of the protocol droid in TPM? Are we to believe that all protocol droids are built of scrap and have sand in their joints even when we see them on the ships of important people?

Right, as a protocol droid/servant, C-3PO needs to be humanoid in shape, because he has to interact with devices and objects designed for humanoids on a daily basis, as well as being harmless and amicable to deal with directly. If he didn't need to be humanoid, they wouldn't build him that way.

Time for my two cents on the 3P0 arguement:

What exactly were the battle droids built for? Battle. In battle you need to be manueverable and fast.

What are diplomatic droids built for? Translating languages, serving as waitstaff, and for the most part being servile and nearly invisible. A diplomatic droid would be in places they would never allow battle droids or other weapons. The protocol droid's awkwardness prevents it from combat manuvers, and might orginially have been deliberate design just for that reason.

Man, I was going to say almost the exact same thing, Tevar.

Except that rather than being purposefully designed to have a docile gait, I think that 3PO and similarly modeled protocol droids walk the way they do simply because it's good enough to work well.

Darth Wong wrote:Did you know that screen tests of the new CGI Yoda revealed that they should make him less realistic? People actually preferred a slightly less realistic Yoda, because they didn't want his movements to look too human. He had to look slightly puppetlike.

Translate this kind of preference to Star Wars and you can imagine that (especially in a universe where some people dislike droids) they would make a point of not letting droids move in an overly human-like fashion.

What's also interesting is that, according to some tests, the more realistic a CG rendering gets, the less people are willing to believe it is real. They will notice and pay attention to small flaws in, say, a rendering of a character from the Final Fantasy movie, but will be willing to accept an in-game model of a human from, say, Halo or Unreal Tournament as a real person, even though there are far fewer polygons in the model, less accurate lighting and much less detail in the textures.

i guess they serve their purpose well enough, why make them more fluid when they have capabilities enough to perform their fundtion well

I agree that puppet yoda could not do what Ep2 demanded of him. AS per Lucas saying so. So they replaced the venerable master with a CGI Yoda. Thats fine.

I like 3PO more than I like the "universal translator". I am not a big fan of "magic buttons",, inc translations.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Man, I was going to say almost the exact same thing, Tevar.

Except that rather than being purposefully designed to have a docile gait, I think that 3PO and similarly modeled protocol droids walk the way they do simply because it's good enough to work well.

so they willingly designed a droid that would be clumsy, slow, and generally inadequate for locamotion? when they can easily mass-produce droids that move smoothly and ably?

if you're using the cost:application argument here, it doesn't seem to cut it (sorry if i misinterpreted what you were saying). it doesn't cost them much to make droids that move well, as the Trade Fed shows. imho, the arguement that it affects people psychologically is a more satisfactory explanation.

my question is, why not put a human torso on wheels, if you don't want it to look human? aren't they sacrificing speed a bit too much?

Cost and application was more of a general answer for the whole technology issue, not just this silly aside about how a bunch of droids made by different companies many decades apart walk.

I don't buy the phychological arguement simply because I cannot see the movements of the TF battledroids as being in the least unnerving, let alone actually scary. Battledroids need to be very flexible and mobile because they regularly function in combat situations, while protocol droids do not.

C-3PO is hardly clumsy, he can maintain his balance and can move from place to place just fine, even being able to book it pretty fast if need to. It's simply all that was needed, so that's all that was put into the design.

My stance of reasoning might not be very creative at times, but I think it more than often is much more realistic and less random.

don't buy the phychological arguement simply because I cannot see the movements of the TF battledroids as being in the least unnerving, let alone actually scary.

well, the fact that you are watching a PG-rated movie and that they are obviously CG sort've takes away from the terror

C-3PO is hardly clumsy, he can maintain his balance and can move from place to place just fine, even being able to book it pretty fast if need to. It's simply all that was needed, so that's all that was put into the design.

it seems to me that a human walking briskly (you know, the imperious walk of the leader) could easily outpace 3PO. he seemed to be designed more for a stationary job. now that might be what's needed most of the time, but what about the other applicable uses for protocol droids that could be tapped into if they could just fucking move faster. they could brief you before meetings, and act as a general secretary (waking you in the morning, helping you keep a schedule), as well as being able to follow you from place to place with ease.

like i said earlier, the psychology problem & the mobility problem could be solved by a torso set upon wheels.

unbeataBULL wrote:well, the fact that you are watching a PG-rated movie and that they are obviously CG sort've takes away from the terror

No, it's because they're not scary in their standard nature whatsoever. I wouldn't be scared of battledroids because of how they walk, but because they might KILL me.

As for your second reply, that's again assuming that there actually is a psychological barrier.

unbeataBULL wrote:now that might be what's needed most of the time, but what about the other applicable uses for protocol droids that could be tapped into if they could just fucking move faster. they could brief you before meetings, and act as a general secretary (waking you in the morning, helping you keep a schedule), as well as being able to follow you from place to place with ease.

But he already can do that with ease. 3PO is simply not this immobile thing that you exaggerate him out to be.

When I was a kid, I thought that C-3PO was funny. When I saw commercials for I, Robot I was unnerved. Why?

C-3PO looks and acts completely harmless.
I, Robot droids sprint, make facial expressions, and other such things exactly like people- which is creepy.

Let me scale up the example a bit. Let's say you see walking down the street, perfectly normally, a TF Battle Droid with a human head attached. Just walking along, smiling, saying hello, reading a newspaper. 9 out of 10 people would rate that as creepy.

Yeah, you exaggerated the example to the point where it doesn't at all resemble the original idea. Of course a human head on a spindley droid body is going to be creepy.

did you see the way 3PO walks in ANH? he's just shuffling along. anyone could out pace him.

ever notice how everyone in the movies is always walking at an extremely slow, leisurely pace when they're talking to him.

in fact, Episode II speciffically highlighted his slow speed. remember when a battle-droid head was transplanted onto his own? the battledroid did comment on how he was moving so slow.

on that note, isn't it a bit of a stretch that 3PO could be somehow transplanted onto a totally different droid's head? i mean, the protocol droid line is completely separate from the Trade Fed battle droid line. even if they were made from the same droid-parts (presumably bought from some intergalactic corporation that has economic relations with 2 different warring factions), 3PO was home-made by Anakin, and i don't know how he would've made 3PO in the same way corporations make protocol droids with out the specialized equipment.

unbeataBULL wrote:did you see the way 3PO walks in ANH? he's just shuffling along. anyone could out pace him.
ever notice how everyone in the movies is always walking at an extremely slow, leisurely pace when they're talking to him.
in fact, Episode II speciffically highlighted his slow speed. remember when a battle-droid head was transplanted onto his own? the battledroid did comment on how he was moving so slow.

Err-this indicates that his slow speed is detrimental to him fullfilling his function how, exactly?

unbeataBULL wrote:did you see the way 3PO walks in ANH? he's just shuffling along. anyone could out pace him.

ever notice how everyone in the movies is always walking at an extremely slow, leisurely pace when they're talking to him.

in fact, Episode II speciffically highlighted his slow speed. remember when a battle-droid head was transplanted onto his own? the battledroid did comment on how he was moving so slow.

3PO can almost run, as shown in the escape from Echo Base in ESB and other cases where he has been able to move rather quickly.

Also, the battle droid head specifically said "My legs aren't moving, I must require maitainance," not that he was going too slow. That's evident of either a compatability issue or a connection problem.

You really don't have much of a point anymore.

Batman wrote:

unbeataBULL wrote:did you see the way 3PO walks in ANH? he's just shuffling along. anyone could out pace him.
ever notice how everyone in the movies is always walking at an extremely slow, leisurely pace when they're talking to him.
in fact, Episode II speciffically highlighted his slow speed. remember when a battle-droid head was transplanted onto his own? the battledroid did comment on how he was moving so slow.

Err-this indicates that his slow speed is detrimental to him fullfilling his function how, exactly?

it indicates that he's slow, not that he's too slow for his purposes. i would argue that if he were faster, he could fulfill more duties, and become more of a secretary/protocol droid, thus increasing efficiency. it isn't expensive to make a droid walk smoothly, and it is even less difficult to make a droid on wheels. so why wasn't he built on wheels? that's what i don't understand.

unbeataBULL wrote: it indicates that he's slow, not that he's too slow for his purposes. i would argue that if he were faster, he could fulfill more duties, and become more of a secretary/protocol droid, thus increasing efficiency. it isn't expensive to make a droid walk smoothly, and it is even less difficult to make a droid on wheels. so why wasn't he built on wheels? that's what i don't understand.

The short answer: stairs. The slightly longer answer is he's designed to help out people in diplomacy and translation, so he needs to go where people go, most if not all places are designed and built so that people who walk on two legs can get around. So he essentially needs two legs to get around.