姫路発、１００台限定ロボットキット、秋葉原の大地に立つ！
Author: Jeroen Page 8 of 51
Real Transformer Robot CHERUBIM
NEXT MOVIE!
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=l778LSfPKww
Transformer robot
Title: Natal / Label: Microsoft
The revolutionary new controller from Microsoft, shown at E3 2009, utlizes a high-def camera as well as audio cues to draw the player into an entirely new realm of fully interactive experience.
Natal, Natal, Natal
Will it put the gamers under its spell?
Or will it be the laggard’s hell?
The ghost of Christmas past?
That has come to MS at last
To tell them stories unbelievable
Of rich interactions tangible
Or enjoyable, fun and emotional?
Out of my secret ural russian laboratorys: my i-sobot steamtank. Music by delavision.
Boy, I have been looking for this cartoon for two and a half years (off and on, that is, see here). So, a big thanks to diamond-blade for pointing out the link.
It was the Garfield daily comic from February 27, 2005 (source)
The reason why I like this comic so much (besides my general fascination for the gestures in Garfield, see these posts) is that it is a wonderful illustration of an idea that I would love to test experimentally. The idea is that certain movements (i.e. having certain kinematic characteristics) might automatically trigger the perception of a gesture (in the sense of a movement that is intended to communicate). This idea is not new and was, for example, described by Adam Kendon in his 2004 book ‘Gesture. Visible action as utterance’. But this idea is also present, to some extent, in the work of Gunnar Johansson (1973) and Albert Michotte.
Prelimary ideas about experiments:
- Generate a randomized display of motion (within some likely parameter space) and let people all watch that same fragment, then check if they see a gesture at the same time.
- Condition: Manipulate it in such a way that it is easier or harder to imagine seeing a hand.
- Condition: Create conditions where subjects feel it is likely or unlikely they will be insulted (perception of intention to communicate appears linked to sensitivity to insults, see my thesis or Bucci et al. 2008).
In the news today, a story about the trademark gesture of a baseball pitcher named Brian Wilson.
This is apparently Brian Wilson's Arm Cross (source)
And from another angle:
Wilson's Arm Cross again (source)
Extra Baggs posted a nice interview with Wilson about the meaning behind his gesture, and it is apparently an odd mixture of something about his christian religiousness, something about his late father, and something about a brand of clothing. Wilson’s explanation is rather lengthy and not entirely fit to read just before lunch (for those with strong appetites: here), so here are the most important bits:
“One More Round is a clothing line [for martial arts fighters]. It has to do with the drive and determination that certain fighters have when their backs are against the wall… And to me, that relates to what I do on the mound. In the ninth inning, your back is against the wall … one of the main things I do … is the crossing of the arms… on a T-shirt I wear underneath my jersey when I pitch. That’s just respecting the fighters. ”
“And also … when I cross my arms, I have my left hand in the fist and my right hand goes underneath pointing with my (index) finger … this finger represents one man. I’m that one person … The fist represents the power of the Holy Trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost … So here’s the strength of God and the strength of man. And without him, I am nothing … But when I cross, I now have this one person with the strength of Christ, and I can do anything through Christ who strengthens me …
So until here, there is little about his dad in this explanation but elsewhere Wilson says that the gesture is also some sort of tribute to his late father. Well, why not? Let’s accept that he added one more element of meaning to what is after all his own personally invented gesture. And a marvellous gesture example it is, I must say. In itself, Wilson’s gesture creation is a nice tribute to humans’ ability to create symbols with highly complex meanings and communicate these to others.
Now, the story in the news is not so much about the gesture itself, but about another baseball player, named Casey Blake, who apparently got a little frustrated and derided the gesture by creating a mock version of it, which Wilson took as an insult. Teammates of Wilson caught Blake on photo, but I haven’t been able to dig it up on the net (anyone?).
Some commentators side with Wilson’s indignation, while others think he overreacts and shows weakness. Personally, I’ll add that I find Wilson is flaunting his personal beliefs in the aftermath of an emotionally charged game, at a moment in which he might better show himself a gracious winner. It has an air of rubbing it in, of “see, God was on my side”, or even worse, “look at me being all strong and victorious, it was all through God you know, you should try it”. Slightly distasteful. Can’t he just kiss a little cross or something if he wants to thank God or something?
I have previously witnessed many footballers getting fined (usually about 10000 euro) over giving the finger to either their own fans or the fans of the other side. But this is the first time I hear that a footballer might get jailtime over it. It is happening in Brazil, to Cristian Mark Junio Nascimento Oliveira, of the Corinthians. He is facing charges in for unsuitable behavior or lewd conduct or something like that, being prosecuted by the department of justice. Usually, footballers get the fine from their own club or from the national football league.
Here is a video of ‘robotic aqua penguins’ that is attracting a fair bit of attention. It is made by Festo (both the video and the robot penguins). I think they have made very interesting robots, and I especially like the wonderful sight of the flying robot penguins. However, the suggestion that they resemble actual penguins in their behavior, either individually or as a group, is a bit far fetched, I think. Yes, the head and tail can move about ninety degrees and yes, they manage to have a bit of propulsion with a swimming motion. Yes, they use sonar to avoid collision. And I will happily grant them that they managed to create smooth movements using the flexible head and tail. Neat tricks, but there is of course quite a bit more to a penguin than that.
“They can behave as a group” … “this can lead to collaborative behavior”… I haven’t really seen any of that in this video but I admit the potential is there. In the same way that my laptop can potentially collaborate with all the other PC’s and laptop on the network. There is at least a connection. Or could we see, for example, the automatic upgrading of applications as a collaboration between the server and the connected laptops?
“The robot arm can soon be used in agricultural and production plants”… I am not quite sure what they mean by that. Perhaps they imagine to create a next generation automatic milking machine?
Having said that: Good job, Festo!
EnGadget about Festo
Festo’s own site with more footage and German comments
I think Salvador DaBot is a very nice example of a very entertaining robot that has some very neat tricks up his sleeve. The gesture routines are nicely done as well. And there is some form of face recognition or modelling going on. Well done!
«Your printer is only botching its job and does not know anything about pop-art! It even can’t dance!»
Salvador DaBot, 2008The Portraitist Robot recognizes human faces in its surroundings and extracts relevant characteristics from them. By using its uncanny artistic talent, it then draws portraits of the participants from the captured images by converting them into vector art and by using inverse kinematics to control the robot’s arm.
More information on http://www.calinon.ch/portraitist.php
Among the new features, the Portraitist Robot v2.0 has been patched with moustache and beret add-ons.
Contours of the faces are first extracted from the images captured through the robot’s internal cameras. The contours are then converted to paths by organizing them with respect to their lengths.
Then, the image is segmented into several shades of gray. The contours and extracted areas are simplified to keep only the important features of the face and make it look similar to a cartoon representation. The different shades of gray will be reproduced by the robot by adding several layers of drawing patterns that are painted by the robot. These patterns are designed to make the painting look more artistic. The different areas are filled similarly as a human would do by recursively starting from one point, filling the current area, and jumping to another area when it is finished.
Finally, a robust inverse kinematics controller is used to convert the 2D drawing into a set of joint angles that are run on the robot.
To look more human-like, motions of the left arm and head have been recorded through the use of motion sensors attached to the body of a person demonstrating the gesture to the robot. This process is indeed highly relevant as even when standing in a fixed posture, humans are producing small oscillations which are important to reproduce gestures that look natural and which can be reproduced on the robot to make it look more lively.
Apart from promoting Robotics as being a fun and interesting research area, this work also aims at showcasing the capabilities of the HOAP-3 robot as well as the integration of different motor and sensory components such as vision processing, clustering, human-robot interaction, speech synthesis, inverse kinematics and redundant control of humanoid robots.