German town of Wittenberg, in Saxony-Anhalt state, where Martin Luther launched the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago has occurred the unprecedented innovation. Namely, there is currently robot-priest that beams lights from its hands and automatically blesses the religious. It seems that today’s technology can not resist the religious. The evangelical church unveiled an automatic blessing robot for the special celebrations.
BlessU-2
The robot on show is called ‘BlessU-2‘ and was developed by the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau. It consists of a metal box with a touch screen, two arms, a head with electronic eyes and a digital mouth. The robot wishes users a ‘warm welcome’, and then asks if they want to be blessed by a male or female voice.
Users (believers) then choose the kind of blessing that they want. Lights then start to flash in the robot’s arms as it says that ‘God bless and protect you’ as it recites a biblical verse.
BlessU-2
Church spokesman Sebastian von Gehren said: ‘It is an experiment that is supposed to inspire discussion.’ He explained that they consciously decided against a typical human appearance. He said that the reactions vary wildly, with ‘one half thinks it’s great’ while ‘the other cannot imagine a blessing from a machine.’
BlessU-2
