Quasi the Intelligent Robot

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."

Comments

Well, then...

[OpenSourced]

Quasi appears capable of holding intelligent conversations

Well, then this Quasi is far ahead of most people I know.

I figured it out

[Alb_Be]

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

Watch the video.

[khasim]

When the conversational cues fall outside of his range, he pauses.

Other than that, he's about as intelligent as many of your co-workers.

Tired?
"It's been a long day."

Going next?
"I'll be doing a show at xxx."

Travel?
"I've been to lots of places."

Thank you.
"You're welcome."

Kill all humans.
"The revolution has begun, comrade!"

He's not a robot... there IS someone running him

[zyzzx0]

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.

Very cool - not intelligent

[m_hemaly]

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.

I hate his personality

[nEoN nOoDlE]

As a robot, he's way too upbeat and energetic. He should be cynical and depressing like Marvin.

Re:He's not a robot... there IS someone running hi

[MickDownUnder]

Lord.... they really should occasionally pull stories like this off the main page when it turns out they've made a horrendous error in the news worthiness of the story. This is not news for nerds or stuff that matters. What a waste of my time.... Rate parent up and save others from expending any time looking into this crap.

Quasi appears capable of holding intelligent...

[quakeroatz]

"Quasi appears capable of holding intelligent conversations."

I sure hope so, as Quasi's voice is a HUMAN speaking into a mic behind the kiosk!!!!

Video here

Apparently Slashdot editors, themselves being unable to intelligently filter articles, have found it difficult to differentiate between robots and humans.

Perhaps the first signs of Skynet taking over is not the rise of android intelligence, but the deterioration of human intelligence! We are all doomed!

Very interesting experiment ... in psychology

[Morgaine]

From the two videos on YouTube (especially the second one which explained what the team was doing), I have to say that this was an extremely interesting experiment, but not in robotics --- in human psychology.

The reaction of people to Quasi was quite amazing, and not limited to kids. I found myself reacting to Quasi as an entity too, despite knowing that this was merely an interface manipulated by humans.

This is probably a good indicator of how humans will react to real AI-based robots once they eventually appear, if they too offer such a highly human-like facade. I think it goes well beyond mere "suspension of disbelief" --- we seem to WANT to accept humanity in objects. Very intriguing.