Quasi the Intelligent Robot 104
Jake David writes to tell us about a uniquely emotive robot — named Quasi — developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Quasi appears capable of holding intelligent conversations. Here is a a video of the robot in action. Note that the animatronic figure is little more than the emotive organ of the robot, whose entirety encompasses the display booth as well. From the CMU page: "Quasi has a number of features in addition to his eyelids for conveying emotion, the most prominent of which are Color Kinetics LED lighting fixtures for his eyes and antennae. These combine red, green, and blue LEDs... His antennae can move both forward and backward as well as in and out, giving them an expressive quality not unlike that of a dog's ears."
He's not a robot... there IS someone running him (Score:5, Informative)
Very cool - not intelligent (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Very cool - not intelligent - yes,also old news (Score:2, Informative)
Color Kinetics, the IP whores (Score:3, Informative)
Quasi has a number of features in addition to his eyelids for conveying emotion, the most prominent of which are Color Kinetics LED lighting fixtures for his eyes and antennae.
Color Kinetics being the company founded by a kid from MIT, whose sole purpose was to patent the technique of using Red, green, and blue lights to produce varying colors [colorkinetics.com] (page three of that PDF is particularly amusing.) They've patented lots of other things, like changing color patterns. The various lighting fixtures they sell cost upwards of $1,000 or more- for a simple PIC controller and a few dozen high-brightness LEDs.
They've had their lawyers chasing down companies making LED color-changing/programmable devices for violating their "intellectual property" [colorkinetics.com] for several years now. If you want an example of all that is wrong with the US Patent system, look no further than Color Kinetics.
Re:I figured it out (Score:4, Informative)
Some AI involved? (Score:2, Informative)
"Making Of" Video (Score:2, Informative)
Better Video on Quasi (Score:2, Informative)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tlqvdAaQNE&mode=relat
It's just a puppet (Score:4, Informative)
This other youtube video reveals that it's just a really fancy puppet.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tlqvdAaQNE [youtube.com]
C'mon did you really think that video was real... if it were, it could pass the Turing test.
Puppet Quote (Score:3, Informative)
"What we ended up doing was creating a guided performance interface that allows an ACTOR to, essentially, puppeteer Quasi, live. And if the actor talks, his voice is pitch-shifted and changed in real time and comes out of Quasi sounding like a 12-year-old robot voice." (timemark @ 3:13)
IOW, nothing to see here. Move along.