Slashdot Mirror
Robotic Photographer
Boojum137 writes " ExtremeTech has an article on a robotic wedding photographer named Lewis. Lewis's hardware stats are modest, so he uses a clever trick to locate people based on skin tone, which is also independent of race. After locating potential subjects with a myriad of sensors, including sonar, laser range finders, and infra-red, he tries to frame the shot according to photographic rules of composition. But the real innovation behind this "red trashcan" is its ability to fade into the background. According to Lewis's creators at Washington University's Media and Machines lab, because of the robot's passive nature, people tend to ignore it after short period of ogling. This allows for some great natural shots, instead of the typical forced and self-conscious shots from human wedding photographers. And, in case you were wondering, Lewis is going to live up to his name in November."
Well, I guess X10 just got made irrelevant. Watch those celebrities run in terror as their sex lives are captured by Lewis the Robot. At least I won't have to see the annoying popups anymore.
s200.org - visit it (me), love it (me).
that thing totally just blends. I could see how people would just not notice a fire engine red barrel wandering through a party.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
A robotic wedding photographer went haywire earlier today. The "Lewis" robot killed and injuring half a wedding party when it suddenly became selfawareand began shooting people with it's build-in laser.
In a comment from the University who build it claimed that the laser-range finders were harmless.
The casualties were quite high since noone could hide from the infrared cameras. "Lewis" found them and did away with them.
The weird thing was "Lewis" suddenly seized its frenzy when it ran out of film??
I mean really, who's ever going to notice a five foot tall, fire engine red barrel wandering the party and using spotlights strategically placed around the room for guidance? It's the perfect disguise! At least (for once) the technology for detecting skin tones and taking pictures of it wasn't developed by the porn industry.
do not read this line twice.
I've had friends do this. They left a disposable 24 exp. cam with a flash on every table at the reception. You get a lot of good pics of the wedding party, and a lot of pics of all your guests too.
do not read this line twice.
I thought skin tone was highly correlated with race.
Are they really trying to say that the machine does just as good a job of identifying all skin colors? I'm willing to believe that, but the statement that skin tone is independent of race seems a little goofy.
Does this mean the women with the smallest dresses will be photographed the most?
Lewis is able to determine that it's seeing a human by recognizing that it's looking at a pair of legs. Once this realization is made, Lewis gazes up to look at the individual's face.
That pretty much describes the way most guys recognize chicks (especially in sunny climates)
it *was* designed by students, after all
I wish the developers of this device luck. They're gonna need it.
Problems? You want problems? We got problems!
1. It's too short. Candid shots from that level, looking up at the subject, are not flattering. And people don't buy wedding photographs that don't flatter them.
2. It's digital, I guess, but in any event uses some kind of video camera to capture images. That's (probably) crap. Still captures from video cameras are of lesser quality than a good digital camera and good digital cameras (that is, "good" by pro photo standards) are as expensive as your house. Weddings are one of the few times in their lives that most people will actually pay good money for high quality photographs. Digital has its place at the low end, but is something as expensive as this is sure to be going to be cost-effective at the low end? I kinda doubt it. Good wedding photography still requires film, preferably nice, wide rolls of it. Show me a machine that can operate a Hassy and we'll talk again.
3. Yes, adult humans tend to ignore something like this after a brief period of familiarization. But there are lots of kids running around at weddings. Ever show a 4 year old the hamster dance page? After 30 seconds, you're bored but they're just getting started. They'll giggle for hours. Same principle here. Just wait till a few unattended kiddos (and there's always at least a couple of kids at every wedding whose parents are nowhere to be found while they tear a path of destruction through the place) notice this thing and decide to play "Let's push over R2D2!" with it. It'll happen.
4. Good wedding photography (Wait - this comment might not be a good one since we've already established that this device is only worthwhile at the low end - but I'll go ahead anyway...) requires making art (sometimes hack art, but art nonetheless) quickly. That requires aesthetic sensibilities and brainpower that this thing just doesn't have.
One last note - I can understand the concept. There are WAY too many wedding photogrpahers in this world with gigantic egos who act like a wedding is a get-together for the purpose of taking pictures. They take over and try to run the whole show. After dealing with them, I can certainly imagine being motivated to invent a machine that would just shut up, do the job, and not get in anyone's way. But that's a by-product of pain-in-the-ass photographers, not really a good reason to develop a new machine. A truly good photographer knows how to be totally unobtrusive 98% of the time. The solution is to not hire bozos. The solution is not to try to replace photographers, even if it's just a few at the low end, with a machine that will necessarily produce substandard output.
Yep. Good, low-cost, low-tech way to get lots of candid reception shots, works out very well.
Best pattern I've seen = pro to do the ceremony and a *brief* set of posed shots afterwards, disposable cameras for the rest.
The "robot photog" is not going to be a cheap piece of machinery for a long time, and a dozen disposable cameras in friends'/relatives' hands will get more and more interesting photos than a single robot could possibly produce.
Of course, at robot weddings with robot guests, things may be different...
(Don't forget, because of my limo experience I've been to more wedding than most people, literally hundreds of them.)
- Robin
What it does show is that it is feasible to do more work in this area - despite its size, people lose interest (although I would imagine this is more to do with wedding-associated alcohol than anything else...) and let it click away without ogling at it - all it is is fairly simple technology appliying simple rules (e.g. face should be in centre or photo or wherever) and then takes a few pictures.
While a lot of these will be crap (same as for a human photographer) what this does allow is more natural photos, where people are not posing, or forcing smiles, or having to hold their smile just a bit too long as the cameraman waits for whatever moment all cameramen seem to thnk comes about 5 seconds after asking everyone to say cheese (don't you hate that?).
So we get lots of natural photos, discard the rest, and end up with some good ones which we might not have achieved with a human.
In the long term, though, this might have much more application - we can get it to recognise terrorists, criminals, finally get the intrusive Minority Report style advertising, and maybe we can train Lewis to recognise cleavage.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Lewis was actually rolling around the Emerging Technologies area of SIGGRAPH this year and I got to talk quite a bit with some of the folks that were following him around to make sure he didn't get into any trouble and explain how it worked. (Which is good, because it's just this big red column looking thing and doesn't look particularly friendly)
The photos it "composed" were actually quite good as it would use the rule of thirds when trying to set up a photo. The only real problems I saw with it from a tech standpoint was that the lighting in that area of the convention center was a bit yellow so their white balance was off and the robot had the embarasing habit of totally ignoring anyone with very dark skin. At the time I was talking to a student from a local school who was there who happend to be black and we let the robot take a few pictures of us... when we went to look at the pics every single one of her was cut off as she was basically being ignored as "background".
The other problem were the batteries - I saw them change the batteries on the 'bot once and there were a *LOT* of what appeared to be very heavy lead -based batteries - they looked like motorcycle batteries, but I'm not sure. Apparently the bot lasts for a few hours on a single charge, but then you have to swap out all of its batteries (I think there were at least 5 of them)
A|Q|U|A
It's a good start. Simple image recognition camera work will have it's useses. The wedding bit is a bit of a gimic.
:-/ )
;-)
However it would be interesting to tie this in with high end digital cameras r even film. Theoretically it would not be difficult to teach a computer the basics of photograpic technique and asthetic ideals (framing, compositional percentages, light qualities) and get them taking photographs better than 90 percent of people) weddings especially. There is an art to wedding photography, but most of it is donkey work and getting people into frame with the right relatives and friends in every shot (unless you have to deal with force 8 gales on a clifftop like my last commision
That is when it would get to be something more than just an image tracking and recognition system whcih is pretty old hat. Teaching a computer how to distinguish a good from a bad photo would impress me.
Although it would put pay to some of my business admittedly
Working for the (other) man
first you will get low quality photos out of lewis.. that is a standard NTSC video camera on it's head. 640X480 fuzzy at it's best.
next most wedding receptions are at dark places... so without the ability to flash (as I highly doubt the low cost video camera is a 3ccd 0.05lux color array with plossl lenses costing around $15,000.00 (for the CHEAP one.. Ours was $35,000.00 but we wanted Zoom)
It's a great proof of concept, and with some upgrades it can be a really cool device. but it needs to get away from video for the camera and use a regular Off the shelf 3megapizel digital camera with flash or 35mm film to do the job.. I certianly dont want my wedding photos to be nothing but low rez,underexposed,blurry NTSC captures..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...It should play the the song!
My opinion? See above.
because of the robot's passive nature, people tend to ignore it after short period of ogling. This allows for some great natural shots, instead of the typical forced and self-conscious shots from human wedding photographers.
Yeah, but can it kiss the bride?
You can't take the sky from me...
I was a cs student at Wash U until May and I saw Lewis running around the halls quite a bit. The robot itself is just a general purpose machine for many robotics applications, the software could be moved to a more purpose-specific robot in an actual commerical wedding photographer. So it doesn't have to be a big red trashcan.
But the real breakthrough is the ability to identify a target among a group of people. Let's just say that this project was DOD funded.
>
> That pretty much describes the way most guys recognize chicks (especially in sunny climates)
The poster of that comment must be female.
A male poster would say "Face? Never seen one of those..." *rimshot*
So I'm a student at Washington University, and I know the people who programmed Lewis. A couple of points:
Anyway, it was a lot more work than you'd imagine to get Lewis to function properly. Lots of things you don't think of crop up (The laser's can't see the legs of a table. Micheal is pale and other people aren't. Wooden doors are approximately skin toned.), and the problem is intrinsically difficult. The skin tone stuff alone eats up most of the processor, nevermind the path planing and mobile obsticle avoidence. For SIGGRAPH he was running on reduced hardware too: he has a dual mobo, but it isn't as reliable as the singe-processor one used at SIGGRAPH.
because of the robot's passive nature, people tend to ignore it after short period of ogling. This allows for some great natural shots, instead of the typical forced and self-conscious shots
IOW, people blinking, coughing, scratching, and picking their nose.
Personally, I find other people's wendings a huuuuuge borefest. It takes every trick in the book to get out of one. If you want to make use of robotics, then make one that can transform into the look of a person and go as a proxy.
Table-ized A.I.
I wonder if they've considered adding a few microphones to Lewis?
I remember a gimmick 35mm camera a while back that came mounted on a tabletop tripod with a servo and directional mic. When the microphone picked up loud noise, the camera swiveled around and shot, the theory being you'd pick up the wildest party moments on film.
Is it just me or does this thing look like a red Dalek?
Start Dalek Voice
I am the wedding photographer! You will line up at the Head Table! You will obey! CIR-CU-LATE! CIR-CU-LATE!
End Dalek Voice
(Lameness filter wouldn't let me use caps for the Dalek voice)
And I though my wedding was scarey....
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
This whole wedding photo thing is overrated. The last wedding i went to wasn't bad, but the first time one of my friends got married after college, there was like an hour of picture takin' downtime between the ceremony and the food. This whole process could be done away with by a high-end image based rendering package. You could get a few good images of each guest as they came in, maybe a 3D laser scan, and a few really detailed datasets for the bride and groom while they're being fitted for the dress and tux (or whathaveyou). Render up a few group shots with the romantic background of your choosing, some closeups of the couple, and you're set. If you wanted to, you could add capabilities for candid reception shots (although you might need some training data for the system to transform 'respectable wedding guest' photos into 'drunken reception partygoer' photos). Plus, you don't have to worry about real life situations like that one 8 year old who refuses to smile for the camera, and you can do Orwellian modifications if you later decide you wish you hadn't invited some particular person.
Or you could just hire a decent photographer, maybe do the time consuming stuff ahead of time, and leave a bunch of disposable cameras around for the reception.
Not that i can in any way fault the robot idea. It does, in fact, kick ass.
(And one last nitpick, it's not really fire engine red, it's Research Robot Red. If it's anything similar to what ActivMedia uses on the Pioneer robots, it's an amazingly impervious, apparently epoxy-based coating which can only be removed with a grinding wheel or similarly serious abrasive.)
As a member of the team working on the Lewis project, I'd like to provide some additional technical details. It should also be noted that the Lewis project is not intended to replace human photographers. It's an easily accessible research-oriented endeavor to explore human/robot interactions in a real-world environment.
Specifications:
Processor - Lewis is a B21r mobile research robot from iRobot Corporation. It's powered by a single 800Mhz Pentium IV processor. This CPU must handle all of the motor drive and low-level robot tasks such processing the data from the large array of sensors. On top of this CPU load is the task of finding faces, navigating crowds, and taking and processing the photos. The two additional processors to be installed in the future will allow Lewis much more power for its photographer duties.
Camera - Lewis currently uses a Sony DFW-VL500 [technical manual] digital 1394 (Firewire) camera. This has a 1/3" CCD that produces 640x480 color images at up to 30 frames per second. Image output is YUV 422 format and is not compressed. The built-in 12X zoom lens is sensitive to 14 lx (F1.8). Higher-resolution 1394 cameras are available, but these do not have built-in lenses; this is bad because focus, aperture, and zoom must be fixed.
Safety - The entire enclosure is lined with bump-sensitive panels, so that if the robot runs into anything, the currently executing program is terminated, the motors are halted, and the brake is applied.
Operating System - The operating system on Lewis is a standard Linux distribution using kernel version 2.2. Various libraries for control of the motors, sensors, pan/tilt unit, and camera are used.
A couple of other comments: the camera is not an NTSC video camera. It was chosen because of the easy ability to control zoom, focus, and aperture from software. Since our goal at the moment is not film-quality pictures, this camera suffices.
Sample photos are available on our website. We have been slow in posting samples due to privacy concerns, not because the pictures are bad. We have over 3,500 photos, and I'd say well less than 2% are false hits -- photos of doors, walls, elbows, etc.
Actually, that was more of a remotely piloted vehicle or a drone, wasn't it? Although the Dod has done some research in autonomous vehicles, a remote controlled mechanical man is a lot more usefull for killing people. We need a different term to use for autonomous, self-controlled mechanica then we use for glorified RC cars on steroids; unfortunately common usage seems to refer to both as "robots". Wouldn't "Robot Wars" be a lot more cool if there wasn't a geek with a joystick actually controling the action?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I saw this Robot at SigGraph and spoke at some length with
it's designer. I think it's a lot more cool (and *clever*)
than it first seems.
It's not so much that it's invisible (*obviously* not) - it's
just that he's slow moving and quiet and generally unobtrusive.
When you pay attention to him and pose, his camera makes an
audible (and unnecessary) "CLICK" - but when he's just quietly
rolling around capturing 'natural' photo's, his camera goes
quiet.
He's all novelty to start with - so he gets a bunch of
posed photo's - but soon people lose interest and get
lost in conversation and/or alcohol & wedding cake - and
then the robot's ability quietly roll around grabbing
photo's comes into it's own.
It's software automatically frames pleasing photo's
according to the usual 'golden ratio' rules. The version
at SigGraph had a base station that would allow guests
to view photo's and have them emailed to them.
I liked it - and I'd definitely invite it to my wedding.
If I had to find a criticism, it is that it's framing
algorithm doesn't cope well with very short people - notably
children. I'm sure that could easily be fixed.
www.sjbaker.org