Showing posts with label robot/cyborg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robot/cyborg. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2012
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Monday, November 22, 2010
Singing and Dancing Robot (Japanese, of course)
And female, of course. I really hate the legs; they give me the creeps.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Vocaloid Holograph Anime Pop Singer Miku Hatsune
Voice is electronically generated (hence the vocaloid), performance is mix of extremely sophisticated holographic imagery and a slamming live band. The technology is pretty amazing; I've watched a couple of times just to watch how the necktie tracks or how they step out of the spotlight or in front of each other. Some comments here and there are grumbling about preferring music made by humans, but really, it's all made by humans; it's not like the hologram wrote her own stuff! The possibilities reel the mind. I find the anime body incarnate troubling. Still, age of wonders...
Check out the instant costume changes in this medley:
Check out the instant costume changes in this medley:
Monday, May 17, 2010
Robot Marries Japanese Couple
Ah, Japan and robots. Here a quasi-humanoid robot named i-Fairy, complete with childish voice, pigtails, flashing eyes, and flowers on its head gives the vows at a Japanese couple's wedding.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Creepy: Japanese Wedding Dress Robot Runway Model
The Japanese, who are light years ahead of everyone else in terms of robot technology, have created robots to perform a variety of tasks. This one (Miimu, a HRP-4C robot) looks kind of creepy, though: a robot runway model for wedding dresses. On the one hand it makes sense in that it is a life-like and animated manequin, though cruising down a fashion show runway is way beyond a moving manequin. On the other hand....creepy robot bride Nippon Stepford Wife. From Geekologie, with snarky commentary by iheartchaos by way of the Daily Dish.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Researchers teach 'Second Life' avatar to think
AP/Yahoo
Researchers teach 'Second Life' avatar to think
By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press WriterSun May 18, 2:33 PM ET
Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in "Second Life." A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world.
But Edd is different.
His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out "Second Life" is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It's also a frontier in AI research because it's a controllable environment where testing intelligent creations is easier.
"It's a very inexpensive way to test out our technologies right now," said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory.
Bringsjord sees Edd as a forerunner to more sophisticated creations that could interact with people inside three-dimensional projections of settings like subway stops or city streets. He said the holographic illusions could be used to train emergency workers or solve mysteries.
But first, a virtual reality check.
Edd is not running rampant through the cyber streets of "Second Life." He goes only where Bringsjord and his graduate students place him for tests. He can answer questions like "Where are you from?" but understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic.
"Second Life" is attractive to researchers in part because virtual reality is less messy than plain-old reality. Researchers don't have to worry about wind, rain or coffee spills.
And virtual worlds can push along AI research without forcing scientists to solve the most difficult problems — like, say, creating a virtual human — right away, said Michael Mateas, a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Researching in virtual realities has become increasingly popular the past couple years, said Mateas, leader of the school's Expressive Intelligence Studio for AI and gaming.
"It's a fantastic sweet spot — not too simple, not too complicated, high cultural value," he said.
Bringsjord is careful to point out that the computations for Edd's mental feats have been done on workstations and are not sapping "Second Life" servers. The calculations will soon be performed on a supercomputer at Rensselaer with support from research co-sponsor IBM Corp.
Operators of "Second Life" don't seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a "fascinating" opportunity for AI to evolve.
"I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in 'Second Life,'" Lester said, " ... let them randomly walk the grid."
That is years off by most experts' estimations. Edd's most sophisticated cognitive feat so far — played out in "Second Life" and posted on the Web — involves him witnessing a gun being switched from one briefcase to another. Edd was able to infer that another "Second Life" character who left the room during the switch would incorrectly think the gun was still in the first suitcase.
This ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant for an AI agent, though it puts Edd on par with a 4-year-old — and the calculus required "under the hood" to achieve this feat is mind-numbingly complex.
A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they're interacting with another person — the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers — has been elusive. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.
AI agents do best in tightly controlled environments: Think of automated phone programs that recognize your responses when you say "operator" or "repair."
Bringsjord sees "Second Life" as a way station. He eventually wants to create other environments where more sophisticated creations could display courage or deceive people, which would be the first step in developing technology to detect deception.
The avatars could be projected at RPI's $145 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, opening in October, which will include spaces for holographic projections. Officials call them "holodecks" in homage to the virtual reality room on the "Star Trek" television series.
That sort of visual fidelity is many years down the line, just like complex AI. John Kolb, RPI's chief information officer, said the best three-dimensional effects still require viewers to wear special light-polarizing glasses.
"If you want to do texture mapping on a wall for instance, that's easy. We can do that today," Kolb said. "If you want to start to build cognitive abilities into avatars, well, that's going to take a bit more work."
Researchers teach 'Second Life' avatar to think
By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press WriterSun May 18, 2:33 PM ET
Edd Hifeng barely merits a second glance in "Second Life." A steel-gray robot with lanky limbs and linebacker shoulders, he looks like a typical avatar in the popular virtual world.
But Edd is different.
His actions are animated not by a person at a keyboard but by a computer. Edd is a creation of artificial intelligence, or AI, by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who endowed him with a limited ability to converse and reason. It turns out "Second Life" is more than a place where pixelated avatars chat, interact and fly about. It's also a frontier in AI research because it's a controllable environment where testing intelligent creations is easier.
"It's a very inexpensive way to test out our technologies right now," said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory.
Bringsjord sees Edd as a forerunner to more sophisticated creations that could interact with people inside three-dimensional projections of settings like subway stops or city streets. He said the holographic illusions could be used to train emergency workers or solve mysteries.
But first, a virtual reality check.
Edd is not running rampant through the cyber streets of "Second Life." He goes only where Bringsjord and his graduate students place him for tests. He can answer questions like "Where are you from?" but understands only English that has previously been translated into mathematical logic.
"Second Life" is attractive to researchers in part because virtual reality is less messy than plain-old reality. Researchers don't have to worry about wind, rain or coffee spills.
And virtual worlds can push along AI research without forcing scientists to solve the most difficult problems — like, say, creating a virtual human — right away, said Michael Mateas, a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Researching in virtual realities has become increasingly popular the past couple years, said Mateas, leader of the school's Expressive Intelligence Studio for AI and gaming.
"It's a fantastic sweet spot — not too simple, not too complicated, high cultural value," he said.
Bringsjord is careful to point out that the computations for Edd's mental feats have been done on workstations and are not sapping "Second Life" servers. The calculations will soon be performed on a supercomputer at Rensselaer with support from research co-sponsor IBM Corp.
Operators of "Second Life" don't seem concerned about synthetic agents lurking in their world. John Lester, Boston operations manager for Linden Lab, said the San Francisco-based company sees a "fascinating" opportunity for AI to evolve.
"I think the real future for this is when people take these AI-controlled avatars and let them free in 'Second Life,'" Lester said, " ... let them randomly walk the grid."
That is years off by most experts' estimations. Edd's most sophisticated cognitive feat so far — played out in "Second Life" and posted on the Web — involves him witnessing a gun being switched from one briefcase to another. Edd was able to infer that another "Second Life" character who left the room during the switch would incorrectly think the gun was still in the first suitcase.
This ability to make inferences about the thoughts of others is significant for an AI agent, though it puts Edd on par with a 4-year-old — and the calculus required "under the hood" to achieve this feat is mind-numbingly complex.
A computer program smart enough to fool someone into thinking they're interacting with another person — the traditional Holy Grail for AI researchers — has been elusive. One huge problem is getting computers to understand concepts imparted in language, said Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.
AI agents do best in tightly controlled environments: Think of automated phone programs that recognize your responses when you say "operator" or "repair."
Bringsjord sees "Second Life" as a way station. He eventually wants to create other environments where more sophisticated creations could display courage or deceive people, which would be the first step in developing technology to detect deception.
The avatars could be projected at RPI's $145 million Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, opening in October, which will include spaces for holographic projections. Officials call them "holodecks" in homage to the virtual reality room on the "Star Trek" television series.
That sort of visual fidelity is many years down the line, just like complex AI. John Kolb, RPI's chief information officer, said the best three-dimensional effects still require viewers to wear special light-polarizing glasses.
"If you want to do texture mapping on a wall for instance, that's easy. We can do that today," Kolb said. "If you want to start to build cognitive abilities into avatars, well, that's going to take a bit more work."
Friday, May 16, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Monday, July 23, 2007
Anthiel's Ballet Mechanique performed by robots
Remarkable performance by instruments/machines of LEMUR: League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots:
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Antheil Composition Gets All-Robotic Show
Antheil Composition Gets All-Robotic Show
By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press WriterSat Mar 11, 4:28 AM ET
It's a concert without musicians when 16 baby grand player-pianos accompanied by a variety of drums, bells, xylophones and a siren perform American composer George Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique," or Mechanical Ballet.
This very untraditional concert takes place Saturday not in a traditional performance hall, but at the National Gallery of Art.
The gallery perched the ensemble on a mezzanine outside the entrance to its current exhibit on "Dada," the early 20th century art movement that was a rebellion against tradition. A typical Dada piece is the reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee.
The technology of Antheil's time — Paris in 1925 — could not put together the four piano parts with seven electric bells, four bass drums, three xylophones, two airplane propellors, a Chinese tam-tam and a siren. All are listed in Antheil's score, the gallery said. All will be played mechanically, powered by electric motors.
Antheil's list did not specify the kind of siren, so a red fire siren was chosen for the robotic performance. In place of actual propellors, technicians substituted fans with blades that hit pieces of plastic to make the noise.
Human musicians have played the percussion instruments in previous performances, said composer and scholar Paul D. Lehrman, in charge of the musical arrangements. He is writing a graduate thesis on the history of the music.
"I like it more all the time," Lehrman said.
He has excerpted 10 minutes from the work's original 25 and adapted it to a short film in the unconventional Dada style. It was Antheil's original intention to combine the music and film.
Though Lehrman called the work "noise" and "formless," he said he has caught echoes in "Ballet Mecanique" of earlier composers, especially Igor Stravinsky.
Recalling that Stravinsky's path-breaking "Rite of Spring" had provoked conservative Paris music lovers to riot at its first performance years earlier, Lehrman said a friend of Antheil's, poet Ezra Pound, had acted as his unofficial press agent and started fights on the Champs Elysees so Antheil could have a riot too — and the resultant publicity.
The 10-minute version will be played at the National Gallery twice on weekdays through March 29, and once on Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is free.
One difficulty in realizing Antheil's dreams, according to Lehrman, is that his instructions seem to call for piano-playing as fast as 152 beats a minute, but even today's technology has only been able to reach 138 beats. Human pianists can only do about 120, he said.
Lehrman, who has been working on the project for eight years, was asked if he would still try to get a faster beat.
"Sure," he said, "if they invent new pianos."
By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press WriterSat Mar 11, 4:28 AM ET
It's a concert without musicians when 16 baby grand player-pianos accompanied by a variety of drums, bells, xylophones and a siren perform American composer George Antheil's "Ballet Mecanique," or Mechanical Ballet.
This very untraditional concert takes place Saturday not in a traditional performance hall, but at the National Gallery of Art.
The gallery perched the ensemble on a mezzanine outside the entrance to its current exhibit on "Dada," the early 20th century art movement that was a rebellion against tradition. A typical Dada piece is the reproduction of the Mona Lisa with a mustache and goatee.
The technology of Antheil's time — Paris in 1925 — could not put together the four piano parts with seven electric bells, four bass drums, three xylophones, two airplane propellors, a Chinese tam-tam and a siren. All are listed in Antheil's score, the gallery said. All will be played mechanically, powered by electric motors.
Antheil's list did not specify the kind of siren, so a red fire siren was chosen for the robotic performance. In place of actual propellors, technicians substituted fans with blades that hit pieces of plastic to make the noise.
Human musicians have played the percussion instruments in previous performances, said composer and scholar Paul D. Lehrman, in charge of the musical arrangements. He is writing a graduate thesis on the history of the music.
"I like it more all the time," Lehrman said.
He has excerpted 10 minutes from the work's original 25 and adapted it to a short film in the unconventional Dada style. It was Antheil's original intention to combine the music and film.
Though Lehrman called the work "noise" and "formless," he said he has caught echoes in "Ballet Mecanique" of earlier composers, especially Igor Stravinsky.
Recalling that Stravinsky's path-breaking "Rite of Spring" had provoked conservative Paris music lovers to riot at its first performance years earlier, Lehrman said a friend of Antheil's, poet Ezra Pound, had acted as his unofficial press agent and started fights on the Champs Elysees so Antheil could have a riot too — and the resultant publicity.
The 10-minute version will be played at the National Gallery twice on weekdays through March 29, and once on Saturdays and Sundays. Admission is free.
One difficulty in realizing Antheil's dreams, according to Lehrman, is that his instructions seem to call for piano-playing as fast as 152 beats a minute, but even today's technology has only been able to reach 138 beats. Human pianists can only do about 120, he said.
Lehrman, who has been working on the project for eight years, was asked if he would still try to get a faster beat.
"Sure," he said, "if they invent new pianos."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
