This has been out a little while now but Kokoro Dreams has a new standing version of Actroid which is for rental for trade shows, presentations etc. It does not walk I dont believe however but that is not its function. A couple of posts before this I mentioned “Artificial Intelligence Inc” and thier Text To Speech solutions, theirs is the voice of Actroid they tell me which is why she sounds so nice, whish is useful as she is intended to be a presenter.
Archive for September, 2005
Actroid can stand
September 30th, 2005“Saville Row” Technology
September 30th, 2005We are currently thinking about the idea of starting a solution business that could be thought of as the “Bespoke Saville Row suit” of character technology, that is, custom made characters that utilize a range of the most advanced technologies ever developed, many of which are unavailable to the market. This is not just about creating a high resolution model, anyone with sufficient skill can do that. » Read more: “Saville Row” Technology
Nice voice
September 30th, 2005
I mentioned some time ago about a very high quality Text To Speech engine I had used in a project, called “CHATR” that was developed by The Japan Advanced Telecomunications Reasearch institute (with my help to develop a SAPI 5 wrapper). Well this technology has been spun off of ATR and a new company in Tokyo is now selling this system and solutions. The company is imaginatively called “Artificial Intelligence Inc” (Japanese, no English site yet it seems) which is ironic as I was just at lunch with a VC who tells me that the term “Artificial Intelligence” has a bad image in Japan (never seen that myself though). » Read more: Nice voice
Tokyo Game Show review
September 19th, 2005
A quick review of this years TGS, more of the same. There seemed to be a little more energy this year which is probably more to do with the economic upswing in Japan at the moment. The XBOX 360 booth had only a couple of items that i found reasonably interesting (sorry, forgot the title), the rest were just nice looking which I am sure is as much to do with the increased screen resolution as anything else. They did have a wrestling game that had some really nice character movement, that seemed like a good step up from the usually appalling fight game animations. » Read more: Tokyo Game Show review
Ars Electronica, Pixelspaces 2005 summary
September 15th, 2005This was a very interesting gala/exhibition/seminar that was much bigger than I expected. Our 2 day panel on emotion technology and art was packed both days with people even sitting on the floor!
Also on the panel were Paul Marino the Executive Director of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences which is an area I am very interested in as an avenue for my technology. We discussed how to make that happen in the future and what Machinima artists are looking for in terms of tools. Also on the panel was Ken Perlin whose grasp of procedural behavior I have admired for some time. He is also working on procedural technologies for game characters primarily, it looks very cool. He helped Valve with their animation technology for Half Life 2 (after they passed on my technology in its early stages in late 1999 / early 2000, the fools 
» Read more: Ars Electronica, Pixelspaces 2005 summary
CEDEC summary
September 15th, 2005After a hectic few weeks I am now getting back in the swing of things (although tomorrow is the Tokyo Game Show and after show parties).
I gave a presentation at CEDEC on 8/31 and hosted a round table on Game AI. Perhaps 80 people attended the seminar and only 1 seemed to be asleep! I made some great connections there and hope to be working with one company soon on an integration that would create a great product, more on that if it comes to fruition. » Read more: CEDEC summary
