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Dancing Robots Help Preserve Japanese Culture
Neil Halelamien writes "As reported on robots.net and other sources, researchers at Tokyo have used the HRP-2 Promet humanoid robot to help preserve moves from ancient Japanese dance for future generations. The researchers used motion capture to record the movements of a dancing master, then encoded and replayed them on the robot. The HRP-2 Promet robots are themselves quite interesting, capable of standing up after lying down and non-autonomously operating a backhoe. The external appearance was created by a designer known for his work on several anime series."
I for one CANNOT welcome some japanese dancing fairy robots as my overlords. Maybe if they were veritech and at least transformed, but these robot overlords are way to geisha for me.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Couldn't they just record the moves for now and use whatever robots the "future generation" has?
Is it because I'm living in Japan and out of sync with all of you? Unfortunately, I can't think of much of substance to say on the topic. Sure, the Japanese are leaders in robotics, but everyone knows that. The dance topic itself is very complicated. My first real-life experience of watching Japanese dance was actually Noh theatre, which is a very special genre. The dancer was actually a "living cultural treasure", one of the old-timers who'd been dancing and chanting Noh for fifty years or so.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Do the do DDR?
Okay, IDNRTFA - but the sheer idea of something like this is a testimony of where we are heading on this planet. A dance is a cultural heritage that should be preserved by human beings, not by robots, otherwise it loses its meaning. If nothing else - the thought of 'dancing robots' really freaks me out - and I'm definitely not a Luddite - just something sick about this...
Culture is meant to evolve, that's how it became culture in the first place - it was grown from simple roots into what it is now.
By getting a robot to keep doing the same dance moves over and over again you effectively halt the evolution of the culture. The culture will now stagnate.
...kill all the humans. Step, step, turn, shuffle, kill all the humans...
To me, it seems like motion capture is not quite enough. To truely record a dance, you'd need multiple angle video capture, along with motion capture, and save it in a raw format on several servers, so that in the future, you don't have the dance altering, as too little movement was actually captured by our young, and very primative robots. The more raw data collected, the more accurate the dance will be for comming generations. Several capture techniques should be used in any such preservation.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
The hell with that. I want that thing as a bodyguard...or so big I can sit in its head.
Optimus Prime doing an oldschool windmill; or better yet, a b-boy battle with Megatron!
"When I was a young Wipper-Snapper-A-Tron, I would dance all night until my servos rusted in the rain and I had to IM for a hover-cab. Ya, those were the days..."
Table-ized A.I.
If nobody wants to learn the dance now, it dies out. Then, if we want to know about the dance later, what will we do?
This is no different from writing down the moves in a book or filming them, except in that dancing robots could eventually record the moves in a way superior to that of a book.
Also, and this isn't really on the topic of Japanese dance, a dancing robot would be really useful for geeks. Many geeks would like to learn but are too embarassed to try with a real partner. It may be stupid, crazy, immature, or whatever, but it's a real block many experience.
Having danced with a robot might well make it easier to get out among the real people. That is, for those who are only afraid of screwing up, rather than pathologically afraid of humans. There is a distinction.
The system is down...
...I think the robot references might only be on the cd version of the song though)
Dancing Robots... (they're taking over)
Dancing Robots... (they're taking over)
Foootbaaaallll!
(just ask Strong Bad
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
Video preservation not enough?
There are plenty of robots in music, like these, admittedly for a different purpose. This article in the New York Times talks robots in art, and about this all-robot concert at Juilliard.
What is the world coming to?
And us Americans like to think we are more creative. That is the most creative excuse for funding I have heard in a looooong time. We are slipping.
Table-ized A.I.
Now all we need to do is give them beam rifles and not only will they run circles round us in football in 20 years, but they'll be dancing around mocking us as they kill us all in the name of skynet.
I like muppets.
Did anyone watch the robot assemble a panel? Jeeze I wanted to fly overthere, kick it out of the way and do it myself. Score +1 for insanely slow robots of the world.
Instead of Dancing Robots, why not teach the dance to a person in each generation, like it used to be?
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I've seen a lot of japanese dance...They sing like shit too.
You don't get it. After several Sake's it sounds just fine. Silly American.
Table-ized A.I.
Now if only the robots could help perverse Japanese culture. They've got entirely too much of that.
Besides the name, did you see how long it took to put up one panel? These are great toys, but I can't wait til that thing can throw a wallboard up and nail it down on it's own without all the human intervention. The video of HeRPe getting up off the ground was pretty impressive; I just can't think of much of a market for a robot that can get up off the ground and not much else..... "Want to watch my robot HeRPe get up off the ground again? Go ahead, knock him over..."
I thought I had an original comment there. Oh well, sorry for the duplication!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is the funniest thing i have read on Slashdot in over a year.
And as an Asian who is somewhat involved in Japanese cultural presentations, I find it hilarious.
Domo arigato Mr. Roboto!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
I thought that was *GIANT* dancing robots oblierating Japanese culture (well, Tokyo at any rate).
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
If only they used these robots to record the dance moves from Napoleon Dynamite......
Good heavens, there is money to be made.
Someone call Sony.
I mean seriously, these people build super robots, then teach them to dance? Couldn't we at least get them to do my laundry?
And I thought you eastern cultures where supposed to be wise!
Geez, somebody responds to an insentive stereotype with their own.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
But can they push Grandma down the stairs?
t ml
http://www.jonathonrobinson.com/3.0/web/webtsos.h
Please remember, the moves stored into the robot were not just dance moves alone. :P
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
And somebody grow a sense of humour!
And I have a half japanese half italian girlfriend, but read some of the comments, and apparently I'm a racist!
Yeah I think asians and blacks are cool too. They're surprisingly just like the rest of us :) Most of the time anyway.
Yeah, they all bleed the same colour.... *awaits flaming* I's a fucking joke people!
Only for old people in Korea...
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
So, in other words, what you are saying is "Why are our robot overlords dancing?"
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
If nothing else - the thought of 'dancing robots' really freaks me out
In that case, I heartily suggest that you don't watch this video.
The researchers used motion capture to record the movements of a dancing master...
As opposed to a dancing idiot?
And if they were redone by these guys, could it do Mosh Mosh Revolution ?
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No sig for you!
Optimus Prime has prior art, right here.
(warning: large flash site)
Reading this article gave me an idea:
I'm an avid swing dancer. In order to effectively learn new moves, I either have to see a video or have somebody teach me. With the video, I can replay it as many times as I want, but I only get one 2D angle. With a teacher I can appreciate the full 3D movement, but if I try to get them to replay too many times they get annoyed and smack me.
There's things like the Jiveoholic Dance Step Database, which is useful by limited to 2D.
Perhaps motion capture could be the best of both worlds? I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to capture the moves of expert swing dancers, and then have a piece of software to replay their movements in 3D. A user of the software could replay moves to their heart's content, switching to arbitrary angles. If robots like the HRP-2 ever become cheap and flexible enough, such motion capture could even be used to replay moves on the bots.
Some folks at MIT made a very rudimentary "swing dancing" robot arm, which provides swing dance leads. I wonder how long it'll be until we see humanoid robots capable of leading, or maybe even interpreting hand signals from a human and being capable of following.
Anything that furthers the advancement and evolution of robotics is fine with me. I'll buy one...
Alright you want to make a robot that does a traditional dance. Fine I guess that has an appeal but don't pretend it is to preserve japanese culture, unless that is the culture of making crazy electronic gadgets. After all DVDs and Movies of *people* are alot easier to imitate than dancing robots.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Is it because I'm living in Japan and out of sync with all of you?
Living in Japan... out of sync...? Nice try, robot scum -- you'll never take us alive!
Just like a goddamn robot to go for first post...
...does it dance to ogg files?
My good friends who work in Robotics here in Japan all tell me the same thing: the Japanese robotics market is all about smooth motor skills and balance. Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have all the heavy-lifting industrial monsters they want, and they have the laser-precises lathes and machines for the exacting stuff. What is missing is the "human" element-- graceful walking and interfacing with humans. This is seen as the barrier to cross into the mass market-- your grandmother won't buy a robot until it can walk and talk like the pet pooch.
I wrote a short article about this market, and how Linux is dealing with it.
davejenkins.com |
Dancing robots help preserve culture - In Japan!
In one of Terry Pratchett's earlier novels, Strata I think, there was talk of a 'caretaker' robot morris - the population of Earth had been nearly wiped out and a bunch of robots would dance the morris dance to keep it alive.
only robots dance for you...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
In Pratchett's early proto-Discworld book, Strata, he has a future earth where the human population is severely diminished (can't remember why) and robots are programmed to dance a Morris dance to preserve it.
I meant the post by tuxter is hilarious, not the story.
Don't let em get you down, tuxter. People on the intarweb rarely matter.
... but the robot that tele-operated the back-hoe was their old version. One of the old-style big-backpack robots, the new version is much more capable. If the poster had RTA, he would have seen that tele-operating a backhoe is "old news". Like I said, not that many would care, but the robots came a long way from version 1 (backhoe driving) to version 2 (jumping and dancing and flexible torso).
Psshhh, boooring, this is old news, these robots might not be able to play DDR, but these one's sure can! :_ 06.wmv
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2003/1218/sony
beside's that robot putting up the panel is weak, the Qrio's f*ck*ng amazing.. the video's make you feel like your watching a sci-fi or something:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/videoclip/
Wasn't it in one of the later Foundation novels that Isaac Asimov had a troupe of robots performing folk dances in the interests of keeping the dances "alive"?
Just another nail in the coffin of good predictive SciFi, I guess.
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Quick correction about the "Sudden IQ drop among the 'tech-bloggers' when robots are mentioned..." post: the link is actually here.
It's amazing how accurately the plyojump blog entry describes the posts in this discussion. I really should've linked to it in my original submission.
I hear that in Korea, only old people preserve culture!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Tetra Vaal Industries Police Robot. (16.3MB Quicktime movie)
Visceral Psyche Films
It's much worse than that. Slashdot and most other tech sites only report on feats like this one. There's no reporting done on the actual science or the breakthroughs of robotics. For example, I was honestly surprised a month ago to learn of the invention of Scale Invariant Feature Transforms last year. This awesome computer vision technique allows a robot to recognise objects based on key features of the object, in real time, with minimal training. This means you could have a robot that can learn to associate an utterance for "ball" with a ball and then pick the ball from a collection of similar or dissimilar objects on command. There is already another paper which extends this work to incorporate background invariance into the transformation so the robot would be able to find the object in real live situations using uncallibrated cameras. There's even an open source library for performing these kinds of transformations.. unfortunately about the only use it appears to be getting is in creating panaroma images. Feature recognition on entire scenes could just as easily be used for navigation in a mobile robot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Feel glad waltz isn't part of Japanese culture. .. stamp 200 pound steel foot down on human partner's leg ...wait for "AAAAAGHHHH" ... step... turn ... step ... stamp foot ....
Step... turn
the Hideo dance
Are you sure none of those moves by this cultural treasue cannot be interpreted as an agressive stance?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
when it can do the robot.
AND the worm.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
The replies tend to be better when the stories aren't so spectacularly crappy.
Since you're obviously new here, you may not have seen one of these rare events.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
...Desperately Seeking Problem to Apply to New Solution!
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
are robot breakdancers who can also fly like helicopters. They do their little dance, then fly your drunken ass home when you pass out. There is a whole new niche for dancicopter clubs and restaurants just waiting for me to profit from!
In _Strata_, a kind of prequel to the _Discworld_ series, the Morris dance is kept alive on an Earth with a dwindling population by robots.
Sometimes science fiction writers predictions turn out to be true (even if that is not the purpose of sf), but I'm sure *which* predictions hold water come as a surprise to the writers.
I'm sure they do noh theater.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Hmm I thought Canada was in the Americas. :)
Anyway, Japan, The USA, Canada and The UK are all in the Northern Hemisphere.
If you think in terms of Eastern and Western Hemispheres (I prefer not to), then The Americas are in the Western, Japan in the Eastern, and The UK in both
Perhaps there is somebody from the Southern Hemisphere in this thread somewhere?
Those robots look a lot better with clothes on. A little dignity for our slaves.
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make install -not war
Japanese R&D groups pour a lot more money into robots than anyone else in the world. Kids see robot cartoons and play with robot toys (transformers). I dont particularly understand this infatuation. Buit at least it encourages some part of the world to experiment more with robot tech.
Based on tons of evidence, I didn't know Japanese culture had anything besides robots!
A number of years ago, a ballet dancer told me about the problems of recording elaborate dances, such as ballets, so that they could be performed again and not lost. A choreographer spends days training a troupe to dance, and unless it's recorded somehow, it can be lost. I guess a bunch of famous ballets are pretty much history by now.
In addition to using elaborate dance notation to record the movements, there also need to be careful notes on how to subtly shape the hands, facial expressions, point the toe and shift the weight at the proper musical cue, etc. etc. etc. It's not just capturing the moves, but all the related stuff, too, that a robot (especially a robot!) isn't going to be able to capture.
As an alternative, what about 3d holographic recording? What's possible with the current state of the art here? Maybe borrowing something like the bullet-time setup from Matrix (ie, 360 green/blue screen with many cameras to capture all the angles). Then until we get good laser holography or what not, maybe a CAVE setup to project the captured data?
Robots Love to Dance
Except latin-1 lacks letters with a macron on top [my point being, it's not even clear what your pet romanization system is, regardless of whether it's valid for you to be claiming all others should be excluded]
If you're objecting to the "h" in "nihon" you have bigger problems.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Robots doing 'The Robot'
Damn GEICO for that commercial.
Damn them to hell.
I can see it now...the next stage in the evolution of Bollywood movies!
Anakin Simpson: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy--ooh, donuts!
The only dance notation I need is arrows.
I just can't think of much of a market for a robot that can get up off the ground and not much else..... "Want to watch my robot HeRPe get up off the ground again? Go ahead, knock him over..."
Here's your market.
With the video, I can replay it as many times as I want, but I only get one 2D angle.
DVD Video allows for multiple angles in a video at the expense of bitrate in each angle's video stream. It's too bad that only porn has really used multi-angle.
You could record the dance with an 88 cent video tape.
I doubt, somehow, that a commercial preservation will do much for the culture, though it may help the company.
In "...plenty of Japanese girl still learning..." the word plenty needs some definition. Last spring in Oakland, CA I was present at a public rehersal of an Aztec dance group. There were many young girls present and performing (though young boys were more prominent). This doesn't to me count as preservation of the Aztec culture. (E.g., as it was sponsored by a church, I really doubt that there was much discussion of the roles of the gods and their symbols.)
Similarly, while preserving the dance is a worty end, it's as similar to the original dance as apricot preserves are to apricots. Dancing robots are a stage further removed. They imply the preservation of something that even small groups can't preserve. (They may eventually aid in something like the Aztec dance group that I saw, but no more. It's like preserving the apricots in formaldehyde. Useful for study, perhaps, but not of much other use.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I really doubt that they are displacing traditional cultural practitioners. I also doubt that they are effectively preserving the culture. That is like saying that vinyl records preserved the culture of the 1930's (or perhaps of the 20's). They preserved the songs for awhile, and that's about all you can say for them.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Maybe they could save Richard Gere's Career.......
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
...and plyojump.com has a great webpage full of photos and info on the HRP, too.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
If so, then great.
OTOH, this was being promoted as a way to preserve Japanese culture. And for that purpose I consider it a failure. (As a way to draw attention to the robots, however, it's clearly a smashing success.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In Korea, only old people buy dancing robots.
Can you throw in a link to the paper and library? I might be able to use this for some non-robotics stuff. SIFT isn't a unique identifier when Googling the pattern recognition literature. And I'd like to see how invariant they are (most algorithms that claim to be scale invariant are only so up to a point) and how they got it to be real-time. (That bit's pretty impressive.)
My Sig fried. Don't leave your Sig in the sun too long.
libsift and there are links to the papers on that page.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Great, thanks for the pointer. But... aargh... it's a C# library. What on earth am I supposed to do with that as a researcher? Hmmm... but it did teach me something by pointing to David Lowe's Autostitch. That looks interesting for my other life in science outreach since we've got a backlog of panos from Argentina to process...
My Sig fried. Don't leave your Sig in the sun too long.