Robots that fly... and cooperate The dynamics of this robot are quite complicated. In fact, they live in a 12-dimensional space. — Vijay Kumar Synopsis Vijay Kumar and his team build flying quadrotors, small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other and form ad hoc teams – for construction, surveying disasters and far more. About the Speaker At the University of Pennsylvania, Vijay Kumar studies the control and coordination of multi-robot formations. Actroid Repliee Q2 can mimic such human functions as blinking, breathing and speaking, with the ability to recognize and process speech and touch, and then respond in kind. The Actroid woman is a pioneer example of a real machine similar to imagined machines called by the science fiction terms android or gynoid, so far used only for fictional robots. It can mimic such lifelike functions as blinking, speaking, and breathing. The "Repliee" models are interactive robots with the ability to recognize and process speech and respond in kind. Technology[edit] Internal sensors allow Actroid models to react with a natural appearance by way of air actuators placed at many points of articulation in the upper body. The Actroid can also imitate human-like behavior with slight shifts in position, head and eye movements and the appearance of breathing in its chest. The skin is composed of silicone and appears highly realistic. Further interactivity is achieved through non-verbal methods. Programming[edit]
Advanced Humanoid Male Robot Actroid-F: Japan’s Super-Realistic Humanoid Gets A Brother (Video) Do you remember Actroid-F, the super-realistic humanoid that we’ve shown you last year? Her makers, robot venture Kokoro and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), have apparently been working hard since then to create a “brother” for her. According to AIST, people kept asking the institute why it only manufactured a female robot, and they not only did that, but also built cameras into the new robot’s eyes to make him look at people (or other robots) while communicating. Here’s a video showing the male humanoid interacting with his sister (in English, shot by Diginfo TV):
Unfair Advantages of Emotional Computing Unfair Advantages of Emotional Computing Earlier this week, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son announced an amazing new robot called Pepper. The most amazing feature isn't that it will only cost $2,000, or that Pepper is intended to babysit your kids and work the registers at retail stores. What's really remarkable is that Pepper is designed to understand and respond to human emotion. Heck, understanding human emotion is tough enough for most HUMANS. There is a new field of "affect computing" coming your way that will give entrepreneurs and marketers a real unfair advantage. What are the unfair advantages? Take Beyond Verbal, a start-up in Tel Aviv, for example. Better than that, the software itself can also pinpoint and influence how consumers make decisions. For example, if this person is an innovator, you want to offer the latest and greatest product. Talk about targeted advertising! How can this improve quality of life? She tells a story about how she and her boyfriend were in a nasty fight.
untitled The Personality Forge AI - About Artificial Intelligence Chat Bots Welcome to the Personality Forge, an advanced artificial intelligence chat bot platform and living community of chat bots and people. Here people create and work on AI Personalities called chat bots who, once created, have an independent existence, chatting with both real people and other chat bots. While you're away, they're having conversations, making friends, and making memories that you can look in on. The Personality Forge's AI Engine integrates memories, emotions, knowledge of hundreds of thousands of words, sentence structure, unmatched pattern-matching capabilities, and a scripting language called AIScript. It's the heart and mind of all the bots here, and it's easy enough to work with that you need no programming experience to get started. Read more about the AI Engine's features. You can chat with bots, post messages on different topics in the forums, and become a part of the first-ever AI & Human online community. There is a lot more to be done.
A Wikipedia for robots (Credit: TU/e) European scientists from six institutes and two universities have developed an online platform where robots can learn new skills from each other worldwide — a kind of “Wikipedia for robots.” The objective is to help develop robots better at helping elders with caring and household tasks. “The problem right now is that robots are often developed specifically for one task”, says René van de Molengraft, TU/e researcher and RoboEarth project leader. “RoboEarth simply lets robots learn new tasks and situations from each other. In addition, some computing and “thinking” tasks can be carried out by the system’s “cloud engine,” he said, “so the robot doesn’t need to have as much computing or battery power on‑board.” RoboEarth architecture: a database is accessible via high-bandwidth connections to robots’ cloud computing environments in the RoboEarth Cloud Engine (credit: RoboEarth) For example, a robot can image a hospital room and upload the resulting map to RoboEarth.
Falling in love with AI virtual assistants: a creepy love affair nearer than you think "I've never loved anyone the way I've loved you," swoons Joaquin Phoenix, in the movie Her. Being a Hollywood production, you might think he's chatting to a bikini-clad twentysomething, or maybe a quirky bookish type with big glasses and an even bigger heart. But it's neither. In fact, he isn't talking to anybody. He's in love with his computer's operating system, Samantha. "The very tiniest seed [forHer] came ten years ago when I went to a website and IM-ed this address," director Spike Jonze told the Guardian. "Being able to talk to the Scarlett Johansson personal assistant as he does, we're not there yet -- but it's not as far away as people think," he told Wired.co.uk. Nuance tries to delay the uncanny valley effect through a combination of natural language understanding, machine learning, context modelling and user preferences. "Language is this powerful programming language we all know," explains Nuance CTO Vlad Sejnoha.