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Quasi the Intelligent Robot

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-does-it-vacuum-floors? dept.

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."

10 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. He's not a robot... there IS someone running him by zyzzx0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Watch the discovery channel special on Quasi here at youtube, here. They only designed the table, the robotics. There's no voice recognition other than the person w/ the headphones behind the robot.

  2. Very cool - not intelligent by m_hemaly · · Score: 5, Informative
    FTA:
    One additional device, an auto-talk board, does not respond to a DMX command. Rather, it is fed a pre-recorded or live line level audio signal and it moves a servo (mounted on Quasi's jaw) in proportion to the signal's amplitude. The net effect is that Quasi appears to speak in time with the audio, without having to invest any time in pre-animating mouth movements.
    I think this means that a human was talking to this auto-talk board behind the scenes. The whole innovation seems focused on the various methods used to convey emotions, which I think are pretty cool and think outside the box of mimicking facial expressions, not on any aspect of AI or intelligent conversations.
  3. Re:Very cool - not intelligent - yes,also old news by Sadko · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seen him last year at SIGGRAPH, in Emerging Technologies booth. Very nice, but human controlled.

  4. Color Kinetics, the IP whores by SuperBanana · · Score: 2, 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 (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" 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.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.
  5. Re:I figured it out by MickDownUnder · · Score: 3, Informative

    No he's actually sitting at desk in front of a computer behind the wall. I think this robot is just as impressive. Hmmm slashdot editors... hint.... if u did .... google-> quasi robot You might have saved us all 10 minutes of time and not posted this crap

  6. Some AI involved? by floorgoblin · · Score: 2, Informative

    Article from Carnegie Mellon Today: http://www.carnegiemellontoday.com/article.asp?Aid =265 Quasi doesn't have to be controlled by a person: "Quasi can be either pre-scripted or autonomous. That is, the team can puppeteer Quasi through a computer or Quasi can function and interact on his own. Part of the team's reasoning for making Quasi capable of autonomous interactions is that Quasi is intended to be believable and entertaining as a real character that people feel comfortable interacting with." And it is capable of speech recognition and generating responses on its own: "Quasi can make responses based on guest input and can recognize speech patterns, track faces, detect proximity, dispense candy and even perform a karaoke duet." No way to tell if he's being controlled or not in this video.

  7. "Making Of" Video by Slaryn · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wow, that's a very cool robot. A bit self-centered, but that's understandable. Another video on YouTube shows a bit of the making of Quasi from the Discovery Channel, if anyone is interested.

  8. Better Video on Quasi by EEPROMS · · Score: 2, Informative

    A more in depth video about quasi including the people behind the project.

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tlqvdAaQNE&mode=relate d&search=

  9. It's just a puppet by EccentricAnomaly · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's someone sitting under that table with a microphone!

    This other youtube video reveals that it's just a really fancy puppet.

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tlqvdAaQNE

    C'mon did you really think that video was real... if it were, it could pass the Turing test.

    --
    There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
  10. Puppet Quote by JonTurner · · Score: 2, Informative

    Precisely. From the video (http://youtube.com/watch?v=3tlqvdAaQNE):
    "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.