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The Robot Professor
kaizokunami writes "From Wired News, we learn that a Japanese professor has created an android of himself that he uses to 'robot in' to classes. According to the article, 'It blinks and fidgets in its seat, moving its foot up and down restlessly, its shoulders rising gently as though it were breathing. These micromovements are so convincing that it's hard to believe this is a machine -- it seems more like a man wearing a rubber mask.'" More from the article: "'I want to check whether students, as well as my family, can feel my presence through Geminoid,' says Ishiguro, who seems perfectly at ease with his new twin. Geminoid already has a palpable gravitas that comes across when chatting to Ishiguro through the android, and one hesitates to even poke the machine's rubbery hands and cheeks."
welcome our new android lecturer overlords?
Seriously, something like this must destroy students concentration.. It certainly seems to take away the human side of teaching.
Will program for karma.
Interesting! While the android is in deed very similar looking to the actual guy it does give off the aura of not beeing "entirely there"! It reminds me of the "look" of a paraplegic or of someone who has suffered a stroke. I don't mean this to be insensitive, its just that it is interesting that the best attempt at artificial life resembles a human who has sufffered from some sort of trauma.
Stop being so damn funny, some of us are at work and now look like crazy people.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
..he is the modern man, with parts made in japan.
no, wait a minute... He's Kilroy!
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To be completely frank, I think this robot is a waste of effort. The thing is completely dependent on human input which means they might has well just have the actual guy sitting there in front of people. Even if they were recording a number of preset facial expressions it will never be truly convincing because it wont be able to call on the nuances of human emotion.
A robot doesn't look alive simply because its eyes wander around the room. If the intent is to guage human reaction to the thing I think they're going to find the response is exceedingly negative given how mishapen and disturbing the robot looks.
It's not like this is anything particularly unique either, it just happened that this guy used his own face as a model. Although, I suppose this guy's work isn't surprising given the amount of research and development Japanese put towards consumer products. I predict that will be the ultimate application we'll see for this work.
I'd be impressed if they were developing AI which mimicked human reactions. If the thing could learn by watching people and apply those observations for its own use in interactions.
"Aside from improving his android's lip synchronization and developing autonomous control of eye gaze, Ishiguro wants to start interacting with students through Geminoid."
Which makes this an avatar. He provides the essential interactive elements which would make it appealing to students (he seems to hope).
Psychologists may find something interesting here, being the way humans relate to this 'once removed' human presence.
When I was a kid in australia we had some friends who lived a long way away in the outback. Their kids attended school by Radio sometimes (perhaps all the time, I don't recall, this was over thirty years ago). A teacher who had a local presence might be an interesting extension of that basic idea. It's virtually the same thing as radio in this context, but more advanced.
What might be good is to use such a device to interact with people who are severely disabled. A system capable of translating the teachers actions into stimuli useful for the particuler student would have a lot of advantages. That way one teacher could interact with a class full of students with varying needs, where their own version of the Avatar translates to their needs.
I think a lot of people are really missing the point of what this robot is supposed to do. There's a lot of comments about how the robot itself isn't autonomous and has no intelligence. That's not at all the role that the robot is supposed to fill.
The robot is supposed to simply project the presence of the professor remotely. Obviously we can do that to some degree with just a two way television hookup, but it's not like being in the room. You can't point at students and interact with them through a flat display. You can't change where the camera is pointing, and the students don't really know what the professor can see.
I think the biggest thing that this robot is missing is "gaze". If you ask me, the single distinguishing feature of presence is making eye contact. As someone pointed out, it doesn't look like there's actually any cameras in the eyes of this robot, so the actual professor can't see what the robot is "looking" at. If the robot could have gaze, reproduce facial expressions, and even replicate hand gestures, I think that would go a long way to having remote presence.
AccountKiller
Does it dream of electric sheep?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
That is is because it is not an really meant to be an intelligent, autonmous robot. It is a telepresence device that has automatic fidgeting and breathing capabilities to allow it to appear more human.
From the Artcle's picture section:
"A Geminoid operator wears motion-tracking lip markers. When the operator moves his mouth, Geminoid's lips make the same movement. A speaker inside the android lets the robotic double be heard."
And best said by one of the comments below the picture section:
"It's not even an android. It's all puppet and that all it is. If you have to have an operator in a back room running the thing, it doesn't even qualify as a robot, much less an "android"..... Oh, and Jim Hensen is dead, so his opinion doesn't matter. Mark Cannistraci"