I have talked about expressive robot maker David Hanson in the past and the work he was doing. He now has a new project that looks like it was well funded to produce a robot simulation of the SF author Philip K Dick using his state of the art artificial skin and artificial muscle technologies. It will debut at the Wired Next Fest today. Looks great from the image but I would like to see a movie. He also has a new site up which looks great, check that out, it has some nice images and movies. » Read more: Hanson Robotics “Philip K Dick” robot
Archive for June, 2005
Hanson Robotics “Philip K Dick” robot
June 24th, 2005Chatty “robot”
June 23rd, 2005
Not quite a robot, more a manequin with a projected face, not quite emotional as it uses simple movie playback but has possibilities “Chatty” from Ishikawa Optics and Arts reminds me of one of the robots in the movie A.I. Click on the image for a short avi movie.
“true” personality in a light
June 15th, 2005
In the news today via we-make-money-not-art is a story about a product from Philips R&D lab. A home assistant that has “true personality” (though i dont see that listed in their literature). Does not look much but notice the way it infers a child or supplication via the angle of its “head”, nice.
Self balancing systems
June 14th, 2005
Another new technique I am adding to the new version of my engine is to make it where possible “self balancing”. This is based on excitation and inhibition. Typically we think in binary terms, we “switch” between two states the analogy of this system being a light switch, you are either on or off, 0 or 1. This is very digital thinking and not too useful when simulating behavior or a system that does not intrinsicley work in this manner. » Read more: Self balancing systems
Emotion in communication
June 10th, 2005I have been researching emotional markers and sub systems in speech and in particular “Prosody” which is according to Wikipedia
… distinctive variations of stress, tone, and timing in spoken language. How pitch changes from word to word, the speed of speech, the loudness of speech, and the duration of pauses all contribute to prosody.
My original aim was to be able to extract specific markers from voice sound files that can then be fed into my engine to drive real time procedural facial gestures. Well, that still is a feature but I have been thinking of using the range of prosodic elements to also generate what would be emotional language. » Read more: Emotion in communication
Emotional toys
June 10th, 2005
A new Furby is in the works at Hasbro with “Emoto-tronics, an ultimate combination of advanced robotic technology, puppetry and realistic lifelike reactions and movements”. Its patented apparently but I wont get worried, it looks like a simple system with not too much depth. It should be good for the market in general though.
Out of touch
June 10th, 2005I must be out of touch, I actually like the idea of two of these games (knitting and cat cleaning)…
Same old same old
June 8th, 2005
The New York Times has an article today on the AIIDE conference that I am disappointed that I could not attend. As usual emotion and other cool AI techniques are going to be the next big thing, again, same as it has been for the last 10 years or so. Well we just keep working hard and moving forward. One of us will get traction sometime. » Read more: Same old same old
Procedural systems
June 1st, 2005Gamasutra has an (old) theses spotlight on a great piece of work on procedural facial gestures systems written by Kolja Kaehler who I used to work with at Katrix and is a very smart guy. He went back to Germany to do his Phd after Katrix folded. Unfortunately I only found he was doing this work after he had just finished so I did not get to use that technology. Go and read it.
