Author: Jeroen Page 16 of 51

Crabfu’s Motion Control

On December 22, 2008

There is a fun company called Crabfu, which is basically one guy called I-Wei. He creates great steam powered robots, 3D art and animation and all sorts of robots with cute motion control (swatchbots). The funny thing about his swatchbots is that he uses direct control of the actuators which create the movement, see for example in this video of his R/C Tortoise:

It does remind me a bit of a tortoise

There is a more complete coverage of his work and an interview with him by Discovery channel:

Can someone please give him a job?

So, instead of just being able to steer the robot ‘forward’ you need to work out, on your R/C how to move the limbs? As if you are learning to walk all over again. Would people like to get down to this basic level of motion control? Would it feel funny to get your bot to go where you want it? Maybe. At the very least, his robots do provide a cute impression.

Some of his robots almost feel a bit vulnerable or helpless, because they have such trouble moving forward. It reminded me of Hall Object (or Dibbes), the ‘gezellige robot‘ that was built to live in the hall of the NPS/Vara building and endear the people who worked there.

Paro, the Mental Commitment Robot

By Jeroen

On December 10, 2008

In Animal Gestures, Robots, The Power of Suggestion

Paro, a present for some Dutch elderly people (source)

In the local Dutch news I read that another Paro, a robot baby seal, had reached our shores. More specifically, a Paro seal entered the homes and hearts of the good people of verpleeghuis Van Wijckerslooth in Oegstgeest.

It is altogether fitting that Paro has come to Oegstgeest. Oegstgeest is a small and very old town near the coast that rose to fame as the setting of the novel ‘Return to Oegstgeest’ by Jan Wolkers. In the novel Wolkers writes a lot about his love for animals, both the cuddly ones and the less cuddly ones. It makes me wonder what Wolkers, may he rest in peace, would have had to say about Paro…

“Tsja, het is natuurlijk van de gekke dat je 4000 euro gaat betalen voor zo’n in elkaar geflanst stuk mechaniek terwijl je maar de tuin in hoeft te lopen voor de meest leuke beestjes. Maar ik snap het wel hoor. De mensen willen gewoon vertroeteld worden en vertroetelen zonder vies te worden. Ze zouden maar wat graag een robot hebben die de hele dag zijn hygiënisch schone vingertje zachtjes rondpoert in hun kont of hun kut zonder dat ze ervoor op hoeven te staan.”

There is a good deal of thinking behind Paro. For example, the creators at AIST chose the form of a baby harp seal, and not of a cat or dog, because people will not compare Paro to their experience with a real seal (since they probably will not have had a real experience with a live baby seal). Robot cats tend to be perceived as less fun and less cuddly than real cats. I know from personal experience that many people, especially kids, are quite fond of baby seals. We once went to Pieterburen, home of the world’s foremost Seal Rehabilitation and Research Centre. Even though the kids were not allowed to touch any real baby seals they came to love them just by looking at those big eyes and that innocent appearance. And now, with Paro, you can actually touch and even cuddle them without smelling fishy for a week. I guess all signs are ‘go’ for entering a loving ‘mental commitment’, which is at least what Paro is intended for own homepage…

“Mental Commitment Robots” are developed to interact with human beings and to make them feel emotional attachment to the robots. Rather than using objective measures, these robots trigger more subjective evaluations, evoking psychological impressions such as “cuteness” and comfort. Mental Commitment Robots are designed to provide 3 types of effects: psychological, such as relaxation and motivation, physiological, such as improvement in vital signs, and social effects such as instigating communication among inpatients and caregivers.

Rather grand claims for a robot that hardly does anything, but so far there have been reports in the news (e.g. here, here, or here) that it does have such positive effects to some extent. Yet, Paro only has a few basic sensors (light, touch, microphone, oriëntation/posture, and temperature). He can only open or close his eyes, move his head and paws a bit and ‘purr’ or ‘cry’. The solution, as always, comes from allowing the power of suggestion to work its magic. Minimalistic functionality leaves room to project feelings, moods, even personality to a robot.

Robot La Yang Che Flaps Ears and Rolls Eyes

By Jeroen

On December 8, 2008

In Robots

Wu Yulu’s ‘talking and walking robot’

Wu Yulu is apparently some chinese guy who has built robots on his own. This fella, named La Yang Che (a translation anyone?) can actually walk and sort of talk. The visionary design of Yulu manages to capture a hitherto disregarded aspect of human face-to-face interaction: The flapping of the ears!

While the lip synchronization only distracts from the message, it is clear to see that the flapping of the ears, rhythmically accompanying the spoken words, beats out the tempo and thereby diminishes the cognitive effort needed for speech perception. At the same time, the rolling or darting of the eyes seems to serve merely to enhance the overall aesthetic experience.

Spykee, Robotic Eyes and Ears

By Jeroen

On December 8, 2008

In Robots

Spykee is a fairly new robot by Meccano, which explains why you need to assemble it from a bunch of plastic and metal parts. AvB describes the assembly quite well on his blog.

Does Spykee actually ‘do’ anything of its own?

For me, it is a bit weird to see that somehow Meccano managed to transform the idea of a robot as a toy or a thing that ‘does stuff’ and respond in various ways to you, to a silly RC WIFI-controlled extension of the owner. The camera only relays the video to the owner, the sound is relayed, and even his master’s voice is relayed through the speakers.

It does not seem to have a voice of it’s own. I cannot even imagine facial expressions. And what of gestures? Spykee does have hands, which is an important requisite for gesturing. But they don’t do much yet, it appears. Perhaps this is where their ‘open source’ policy comes in. Maybe they expect me, or you, to program all sort of interesting gestures for Spykee. A little bit like making gestures for Second Life. Hmmm, maybe the gesture databases for Second Life could somehow be ported to Spykee?

There is an interesting comparison here between Spykee and Rovio. Rovio is even worse at gesture, since it does not even have anything that could be interpreted as hands or arms. But it does have more autonomous navigation.

Rent a Robosaurus

By Jeroen

On December 2, 2008

In Robots, Uncategorized

This time the robot, Robosaurus, is not from WowWee, nor is it cute, small and safe. There are quite a few robots that you can rent for shows or trade fairs and such. Honda’s Asimo, Titan (Cyberstein), Mico … feel free to add what you know here.

There is a small company called rentarobot. But their robots are quite dull, it appears. You can also rent a robot here, for $750 to $1500 a day (operator included). This company called entertainment robots is also in the rental business. They have quite a good collection and build custom robots for you.

Robopanda walkthrough

By Jeroen

On December 2, 2008

In Robots, Uncategorized

A walk thru of the recently announced Robopanda robot from WowWee at the CES 2008. Quite a talkative little panda robot he is. “Scratch my tummy if you want me to tell you a story, touch my hand if you want to teach me a new trick”. Sounds a bit like “press 1 for this, press 2 for that”.

Emotional Response to Robot Child

By Jeroen

On December 2, 2008

In Robots, Uncategorized

Endearing or scary?

This video generated a lot of interesting response on YouTube. Most people find it quite disturbing. It reminded me of my little kid who can also be scared by toy robots. Could it be the case that, as we grow older, we are not so easily scared because we can analyse the toy robots. And if we then encounter one that we cannot analyse we freak out? Hmmm, it seems to be a much more direct emotional response. What is it about these robots that approach human-like features.

Mori’s Uncanny Valley.

It seems to be a clear cut example of what Mori described: The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness (source wikipedia).

Bear in mind that the uncanny valley has not been ‘proven’ scientifically, but since it is philosophically impossible to prove a scientific hypothesis, it is more important that it has not been disproven, yet. Bartneck wrote two papers about it, see the refs in wikipedia.

Tokyo Toy Show 2008

By Jeroen

On December 2, 2008

In Robots, Uncategorized

Impression of the Tokyo Toy Show

Couple of highlights:
Stuff from Takara Tomy: Eve and Wall-E robots, i-Sobot customizations
Light Sabre fencing from Bandai.

Sega’s love robot E.M.A. at the Tokyo Toy Show 2008?
Looks exactly like WowWee’s Femisapien to me… Give us a kiss then, little one 🙂

In Memoriam: Piet Westendorp

By Jeroen

On December 1, 2008

In In Memoriam

Tragic news reached me today through the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Piet Westendorp has passed away, much too soon, on november 19.

He was a great scholar, writer, and allround human being, who gave me and many other students a lot of support. He shared his great experience as willingly as his many views on a world of topics. As an example, he made a wonderful analysis of the painting Victory Boogie Woogie, together with Willem van den Hoed. He also wrote Open here: the art of instructional design with Paul Mijksenaar, which brought him world fame. A more recent book was Interface Design & Document Design.

We shared an interest in illustrations of pointing gestures and of the movement in gestures. He specifically collected illustrations of gestures to study the arrows used in instructional images. It was one of those many things that Piet was very enthusiastic about. He loved the arrows in the Gebarenwoordenboek voor kinderen.

gebarentaal
Pictures of SLN signs that had ´lovely arrows´, according to Piet. (source)

Piet worked at the TU Delft and the TU Eindhoven, but I like to think he worked as an independent ´free thinker´. He seemed to effortlessly combine a very pragmatic attitute towards the world of research with a passion for ideas. As a senior figure at our department he always reached out to newcomers. Through his example he inspired people to keep an open mind, and stay young. To my memory, at least, Piet will always be a generous, brilliant, and somewhat rebellious boy. Provocative and curious. He will be sorely missed.

His page at the TU/e
In memoriam at STIC (Studiekring Technische Informatie en Communicatie)
Tributes at InfoD-Cafe
Obituary at TU Delft (here)

Update 8 dec ’08: His partner sent a picture of Piet.

Piet Westendorp at the Delta Hotel

In the background you can see the lights of the harbour and the industry at Vlaardingen. We had dinner there with a group of colleagues, at the Delta Hotel, which is a beautiful place in an interesting setting. It was in memory of Piet, who came there regularly. His analysis of Victory Boogie Woogie still managed too trigger a heated discussion…

Update 22 december: Elif sent me this link to a video where Piet talks about his specialty, the design of visual information.