Quasi the Intelligent Robot

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Sunday October 1, 2006 @05:30AM 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."

6 of 104 comments (clear)

Well, then... by OpenSourced · 2006-10-01 05:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Quasi appears capable of holding intelligent conversations

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

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Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I figured it out by Alb_Be · 2006-10-01 05:35 · Score: 5, Funny

There's someone sitting under that table with a microphone!
He's not a robot... there IS someone running him by zyzzx0 · 2006-10-01 05:48 · 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.
Very cool - not intelligent by m_hemaly · 2006-10-01 05:51 · 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.
I hate his personality by nEoN+nOoDlE · 2006-10-01 06:00 · Score: 5, Funny

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

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Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Re:He's not a robot... there IS someone running hi by MickDownUnder · 2006-10-01 06:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.