Real robots worlds away from R2D2.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

ROBOTS + US What: New exhibit at Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Where: 1945 S.E. Water Ave. in Portland When: Through Sept. 4 How much: Museum general admission is $9 for ages 14 to 62; $7 for 63 and older and youths 13 and younger For more information: www.omsi.edu or [phone]

PORTLAND - Big Brother is not only watching you, you're watching him.

And his head is big and weird and neon green.

No, this is not 1984. It's 2006, and robots are nothing like fiction or popular culture or Hollywood imagined the future would make them.

They're logical. They're simulated. And one is named Jeremiah.

That's the name of the "virtual head," the man with "Big Brother is glad to see you" stamped on his machine and the one that seems to be the star attraction at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's new exhibit, Robots + Us, that opened Memorial Day weekend and runs through Labor Day.

A video camera records Jeremiah's visitors. Any sudden change in the scene - i.e., children (and adults) jumping around in front of him, making faces at him - and Jeremiah's "emotion engine" redraws his face in reaction.

Originated at the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Robots + Us exhibit in OMSI's Meyer Memorial Trust Hall compares the fantasy of science-fiction robots with the technical realities of present-day robots and what scientists are working on for the future.

"It's a hands-on interactive way to look at the history of robots and why they are the way they are today," OMSI spokesman Lee Dawson says.

You'll learn why R2D2 and C3PO from "Star Wars," Robby the Robot from the 1956 sci-fi film "Forbidden Planet," Commander Data from TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and Hollywood's "Robocop" - cultural icons we think of when we generally think of robots - are not reality; and why robots that mimic cockroaches, and even ant colonies, are.

"If we can make a robot that is half as agile as a roach, we will have a very impressive mobile vehicle," says Roger Quinn of the biorobotics lab at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

At least that's the quote you see on the exhibit's "Roach Bots" lab as you watch a video of Stanford University researchers working with robots that move like cockroaches.

Although a cockroach wouldn't score high on an IQ test, it apparently has lots of intelligence built into its body, according to this lab. Think about the way a cockroach's legs respond instantly as it climbs over rough terrain despite its limited brain power. And just like that dirty little cockroach, robots also use similar strategies when they have limited onboard processing power.

Another popular lab here is the "Robot Arm," a most impressive contraption that children on school field trips were busy trying to stump on a recent weekday afternoon. Based on an ancient Chinese puzzle, the cat-quick arm rotates 360 degrees as it picks up pieces of a seven-piece square puzzle, almost always faster than any human.

"It's an unfair contest - the robot already knows the answer," says a placard on the arm. "When you select a design, you activate about 1,200 lines of computer instructions. A program tells the robot exactly where the pieces are, the order in which it should lift them and where it should put them down."

We humans, on the other hand, have to think about it.

This particular robot also gives us a morality question: "Would you feel bad cheating a robot?"

Don't answer that.