A robot called Gerty

Finally had some time to watch Moon by Duncan Jones yesterday evening. Certainly a good sci-fi movie with different implications to ruminate and ponder. Slow and with a nice music. I found the props quite curious and not necessarily super showy.

One of the most intriguing feature of the movie is certainly GERTY, a robot whose voice is played by Kevin Spacey. Based on the Cog project, there is both a prop for static scenes and CG when it’s moving around.

A convincing character, GERTY has a limited AI, as discussed by the director in Popular Mechanics:

“There is limited AI. GERTY is not wholly sentient. He really is a system as opposed to a being in his own right–that was one of the things I wanted to get across. The audience, and the different Sams, bring their own baggage to GERTY. They’re the ones who anthropomorphize him and basically make him out to be more than he is. GERTY’s system is very simple: He’s there to look after Sam and make sure that he survives for 3 years. That’s it. When you start watching the film, you’re already making unwarranted assumptions about GERTY because of the HAL 9000 references and Kevin Spacey’s slightly menacing voice. That’s what the Sams do as well. The company itself, Lunar Industries, is nefarious. GERTY is not. He’s doing his job. He has conversations with the company but he doesn’t tell Sam because he’s programmed not to. It’s as simple as that.
(…)
The idea was to create a machine that was incorporating more than one type of sense data. So it had cameras for eyes, tactile fingertips and a moving robotic arm. It had an audio capture system. It was basically taking all of these various forms of data, giving it the eyes to see something and have the arm reach out and touch it in the right place“

See also some interesting elements about him from this interview in fxguide

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of GERTY (IMHO) is its smiley-face display to express its feelings. This little screen is meant to express the robot’s emotion in a very basic ways with different permutations. Here again, it’s good to read the director’s intents:

“I use a lot of social networking sites. I’m on Twitter all the time. I use all these various forms of networking, including the text version of Skype. I tend to use smiley faces to make sure people know that I’m joking. That’s my own reason for using it on Gerty. I also like the idea that Gerty’s designed by this company which doesn’t have much respect for Sam and treats him in a patronizing way. So they use smiley faces to communicate with him.“

I really liked the way the smiley are used, a sort of simplistic (and patronizing as he mentionned) representation of an assistant. Very much reminiscent to Clippy. This use of smileys reminded me of the Uncanny Valley and this excerpt from Scott McCloud‘s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art:

For McCloud, a smiley face is the ultimate abstraction because it could potentially represent anyone. As he explained, “The more cartoony a face is…the more people it could be said to describe“. Besides, it’s really curious anthropomorphically because the robot design has two characteristics: the smiley face (with eyes and a mouth) and a camera. It’s quite funny because in lots of sci-fi movies/comics, the camera looks as an eye and is sometimes perceived by people as having the same function. In Moon, the combination of the camera and the smiley face makes it very quirky.

Why do I blog this? trying to make some connections between this movie I saw and some interesting elements about robot design.

Robot exhibit at the Design Museum in Zurich

Went to Zurich last wednesday, for the robot exhibit at the Design Museum. Called “Robots – From Motion to Emotion?”, it is meant to give an overview of robotic research, with a presentation of robot highlights (ASIMO, nanorobots or the robotic jockey) as well as addressing issues such as: why robots are accepted or rejected and what characteristics determine the relationship of people to machines.

However, the part that I attracted my interest was the weird desk of a robotic designer:

It’s actually a “staged mess” that may be supposed to show how robot design is grounded into specific references (books, picture, newspaper clipping), artifacts (computers, electronic and electric tools) and prototypes. Unfortunately, this part was documented. I was thus left out with my own musing when examining it. If you look at the books in the picture below, you can see that the references that has been chosen ranges from “The Buddha in the robot” to “Y2K or “Action perception” and Charles Stross’s “Singularity”. Don’t know what lead to this choice but there were also different pieces by Asimov that I haven’t captured. Obviously the bible for robot designers/fans (that said, I am often mesmerized by the preponderance of Asimov in this field, there might be a lot to do in terms of Non-Asimovian robot design, as Frederic highlighted already)

The office floor interestingly features cat food and a cat food dispenser, which may account for the importance of animal proximity in the robot design process. Perhaps some sort of hint to tell us to what extent creating a bot needs a metaphor from living beings:

Why do I blog this? the whole exhibit gives and interesting overview of the robot scene but I was a bit disappointed by the design/art part since there’s a lot going on this field. For that matter, it was a bit conservative. And as usual with robots, there is always a strong emphasis on locomotion as opposed to other characteristics of robots that I would find more intriguing to explore (agency, learning from the history of interactions, networked capabilities, etc.).

Dog vacuum cleaner from 1972

It seems that people wanted to combine toys and robots for quite a long time, as attested by this intriguing dog-shaped vacuum cleaner patented in 1972:

“A toy dog closely resembling a real dog and having a hollow interior in which is mounted a vacuum cleaner having a suction hose which is retractable from the tail end of the dog. This enables vacuuming a dog after a hair cut and grooming without causing fear to the dog, inasmuch as the vacuum cleaner noise is greatly muffed by such enclosure. The vacuum cleaner is convertible to a blower and air issuing from the tail end can be heated so as to serve as a dryer.“

why do I blog this? curiosity towards robots and their combination with familiar representations. The dog is interesting as it is a pet (easily acceptable by owners) but it’s curious to think about a furry device to clean things up. It’s also pertinent to see the time taken by this sort of artifacts to be adopted… in the end with roombas which are a bit more minimalist.

Wizkid: a computer with a neck

Morning partner in commuting Frederic Kaplan finally revealed his latest project called wizkid (conducted with his team). In his words:

“Wizkid is a novel kind of computer permitting easy multi-user standing interactions in various contexts of use. The interaction system does not make use of classical input tools like keyboard, mouse or remote control, but features instead a gesture-based augmented reality interaction environment, in conjunction with the optional use of convivial everyday objects like books, cards and other small objects.
(…)
Wizkid could be described as a computer display with a camera mounted on top, fixed on a robotic neck. It looks like a computer, but it is a robot that can gaze in particular direction and engage in face-to-face interaction.“

Martino d’Esposito, who take care of the design aspects, defines it as “a computer with which we could communicate in a more natural manner, but which would still not look “human”.
Why do I blog this? I find the project interesting because it’s shows the convergence between computer/ubiquitous computing and robots, plus I quite like approach Frederic describes by: “despite some successful results this kind of natural interaction systems has tended to be used only in the domain of interaction with anthropomorphic or zoomorphic robots and progress in these fields has not impacted more mundane kinds of computer systems“. Furthermore, the interaction modes with that device are very intriguing through the “halo” mode (see description in the interview). From the output point of view, the interesting part is the “body language” used by the wizkid to express interest, confusion, and pleasure. To some extent it forces to ask questions close to the one I have to address with wii gestures, except that in the wizkid case it’s about output gestures (and not input gestures for the wiimote/nunchuk).

For those who want to see it, Wizkid is part of MoMA‘s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit, running from February 24 to May 12, 2008.

The amazing magic robot

ALWAYS gives the RIGHT answer!

Seen on a flea market in Brussels, this morning-

Phlogiston-debunking about robotics

Got back to this interview of Bruce Sterling about robots in 2005 and found some intriguing points:

“AM: How do you think robots will be defined in the future?

BS: I’d be guessing that redefining human beings will always trump redefining robots. Robots are just our shadow, our funhouse-mirror reflection. If there were such a thing as robots with real intelligence, will, and autonomy, they probably wouldn’t want to mimic human beings or engage with our own quirky obsessions. We wouldn’t have a lot in common with them-we’re organic, they’re not; we’re mortal, they’re not; we eat, they don’t; we have entire sets of metabolic motives, desires, and passions that really are of very little relevance to anything made of machinery.

AM: What’s in the future of robotics that is likely very different from most people’s expectations?

BS: Robots won’t ever really work. They’re a phantasm, like time travel or maybe phlogiston. On the other hand, if you really work hard on phlogiston, you might stumble over something really cool and serendipitous, like heat engines and internal combustion. Robots are just plain interesting. When scientists get emotionally engaged, they can do good work. What the creative mind needs most isn’t a cozy sinecure but something to get enthusiastic about.

AM: When will robots be allowed to vote?

BS: At this point, I’d be thrilled to see humans allowed to vote.“

Why do I blog this? Only because I liked his description and the phlogiston-debunking tone of the interview.

Nabaztag sales figures

Quick note about Nabaztag, launched in 2005. I found some figures that might be of interest:

50,000 rabbits sold as of June 2006 (Source: Libération)
135,000 rabbits sold as of May 2007 (Source: Le Monde)

It’s a pity the figures are only for France, but it gives an interesting picture of how this type of communication objects is sold. Sony sold 200,000 AIBOs worldwide (Source). And yes, I know it’s like comparing apples and oranges but it gives a picture of the number of devices out there as well as how things evolve over time.

DIY robotics

Some excerpts from an article in Scientific American on “Open Source Hardware Makes its Debut in “Robot Internet Mashup”. It’s about the “Telepresence Robot Kit“, a sort of DIY robotic platform developed by a group led by Illah Nourbakhsh (professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon, University in Pittsburgh).

“TeRK program aims to allow anyone to use it as a control center for just about any robot they can imagine. Initially, though, Qwerk will be used for teaching and for projects that are “just for fun.”

Online, TeRK users can access complete parts lists for robot kits that range from easy (think a three-wheeled spybot with a camera that can be controlled from any Web browser, and which can be built in a couple of hours) to ambitious: LeGrand envisions an arm on a Qwerk-powered robot that would allow it to carry out such functions as pressing elevator buttons in order to navigate entire office buildings. All of the software that runs Qwerk is open source, which makes TeRK incredibly flexible in the hands of the technically savvy.
(…)
“We also want to have people [akin to mechanics who] go under the hood of the car,” he says. “At all levels we reveal enough of the interior detail so that users can go in and program at the lowest level they want.”“

(pictures taken from TeRK website)

Why do I blog this? observing the robotics-ubicomp convergence, the advent of such kits seem to be interesting. Besides, I quite like this DIY, “reveal the interior” concept.

Nabaztag and Furby

Feeling that robots and ubiquitous computing are converging to a new type of artifact, filling the environment with instances of these systems is a very curious experience. This is why I bought a Nabaztag last year and a Furby recently. The former is often put in the ubicomp/commnicated objects category, whereas the latter is seen as a toy or a robot for kids (although its locomotion is pretty limited). IMHO, they belongs to the same phylum.

The common feature I like in both is the ability to express things by talking: the Nabaztag tells the news, (short) weather forecasts, messages by friends, random thoughts (and moves its ears during tai-chi exercises) and the Furby try to interact with my by saying words (in furbish or french): sometimes at random, sometimes because I asked her a question (yes my furby is a “she”). I don’t have the latest Nabaztag version that has a microphone but it does not seem to interact like a furby: the mic can only be used by pressing the button on the rabbit’s head and asking for specific things (like radio, weather…). Even when the words they say are random, the experience is intriguing (especially when you have people at home that do not know what-the-hell-is-this-crap-that-screams. Generally the Furby is more talkative than the Nabaztag because it’s programmed like this and because the microphone allows her to react. Although the interactions are punctual, it’s sufficient to spark discussion between people around: there is a sort of sociability generated by the artificial pet utterance.

What is great is when the pet start to order things or complains about the situation. This is often the best case scenario in which attendants “best” react to the machine (“what? why is he asking us to do that?”, “hey? shut up”) and sometimes talk to the pet (even to the nabaztag who could not react accordingly). However, it’s not the persuasive aspect of the artificial pet that is interesting, it’s not because the nabaztag or the furby are funny or absurd when they complain that I as a user want it to remind me to water the plant or go eating. It’s rather because there utterances generate a discourse around it, often about its behavior, programming or evolution.

[Besides, it's curious to put them close to each other and see the furby answering the nabaztag (unfortunately the rabbit cannot reply). The next step would be to hook a chatbot to an artificial pet...]

RoboDS

Turn your Nintendo DS into a mobile robot for $99 with roboDS (see video):

“his is a pre-order for RoboDS kit for DSerial2 multiple-interface card for NDS. It is an open robot platform for NDS that can be controlled via NDS Wi-Fi connection using a web browser interface. Install your own wireless camera onto RoboDS and monitor your home remotely! Wire-up your own laser pointer for extra flair, but use it responsibly!“

Why do I blog this? this is the sort of thing I qualify as “intriguing”. But why the hell is this interesting? What is funny is the majority of websites and blogs that deal with gadgets never stress why such artifacts have a potential value (apart from their engineering/technical value). So, few points:
(1) It raises the question of the “robot” identity? why is robotDS a robot? in this case it’s called so because the wheels allows the DS to move around. Well, if a robot is defined by locomotion that’s a bit limited and sad; plus it does not account for the current convergence between robotics and ubiquitous computing.
(2) Modularity: the idea of turning a mobile device into something more complex through such as add-on is intriguing. Building artifacts or services on top of others artifacts is pertinent and curious especially when done in a DIY way.