Image Image Image Image Image

Presented at CHI 2012, Touché is a capacitive system for pervasive, continuous sensing. Among other amazing capabilities, it can accurately sense gestures a user makes on his own body. “It is conceivable that one day mobile devices could have no screens or buttons, and rely exclusively on the body as the input surface.” Touché.

Noticing that many of the same sensors, silicon, and batteries used in smartphones are being used to create smarter artificial limbs, Fast Company draws the conclusion that the market for smartphones is driving technology development useful for bionics. While interesting enough, the article doesn’t continue to the next logical and far more interesting possibility: that phones themselves are becoming parts of our bodies. To what extent are smartphones already bionic organs, and how could we tell if they were? I’m actively researching design in this area – stay tuned for more about the body-incorporated phone.

A study provides evidence that talking into a person’s right ear can affect behavior more effectively than talking into the left.

One of the best known asymmetries in humans is the right ear dominance for listening to verbal stimuli, which is believed to reflect the brain’s left hemisphere superiority for processing verbal information.

I heavily prefer my left ear for phone calls. So much so that I have trouble understanding people on the phone when I use my right ear. Should I be concerned that my brain seems to be inverted?

Read on and it becomes clear that going beyond perceptual psychology, the scientists are terrifically shrewd:

Tommasi and Marzoli’s three studies specifically observed ear preference during social interactions in noisy night club environments. In the first study, 286 clubbers were observed while they were talking, with loud music in the background. In total, 72 percent of interactions occurred on the right side of the listener. These results are consistent with the right ear preference found in both laboratory studies and questionnaires and they demonstrate that the side bias is spontaneously displayed outside the laboratory.

In the second study, the researchers approached 160 clubbers and mumbled an inaudible, meaningless utterance and waited for the subjects to turn their head and offer either their left of their right ear. They then asked them for a cigarette. Overall, 58 percent offered their right ear for listening and 42 percent their left. Only women showed a consistent right-ear preference. In this study, there was no link between the number of cigarettes obtained and the ear receiving the request.

In the third study, the researchers intentionally addressed 176 clubbers in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they spoke to the clubbers’ right ear compared with their left.

I’m picturing the scientists using their grant money to pay cover at dance clubs and try to obtain as many cigarettes as possible – carefully collecting, then smoking, their data – with the added bonus that their experiment happens to require striking up conversation with clubbers of the opposite sex who are dancing alone. One assumes that, if the test subject happened to be attractive, once the cigarette was obtained (or not) the subject was invited out onto the terrace so the scientist could explain the experiment and his interesting line of work. Well played!

Another MRI study, this time investigating how we learn parts of speech:

The test consisted of working out the meaning of a new term based on the context provided in two sentences. For example, in the phrase “The girl got a jat for Christmas” and “The best man was so nervous he forgot the jat,” the noun jat means “ring.” Similarly, with “The student is nising noodles for breakfast” and “The man nised a delicious meal for her” the hidden verb is “cook.”

“This task simulates, at an experimental level, how we acquire part of our vocabulary over the course of our lives, by discovering the meaning of new words in written contexts,” explains Rodríguez-Fornells. “This kind of vocabulary acquisition based on verbal contexts is one of the most important mechanisms for learning new words during childhood and later as adults, because we are constantly learning new terms.”

The participants had to learn 80 new nouns and 80 new verbs. By doing this, the brain imaging showed that new nouns primarily activate the left fusiform gyrus (the underside of the temporal lobe associated with visual and object processing), while the new verbs activated part of the left posterior medial temporal gyrus (associated with semantic and conceptual aspects) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (involved in processing grammar).

This last bit was unexpected, at first. I would have guessed that verbs would be learned in regions of the brain associated with motor action. But according to this study, verbs seem to be learned only as grammatical concepts. In other words, knowledge of what it means to run is quite different than knowing how to run. Which makes sense if verb meaning is accessed by representational memory rather than declarative memory.

Researchers at the University of Tampere in Finland found that,

Interfaces that vibrate soon after we click a virtual button (on the order of tens of milliseconds) and whose vibrations have short durations are preferred. This combination simulates a button with a “light touch” – one that depresses right after we touch it and offers little resistance.

Users also liked virtual buttons that vibrated after a longer delay and then for a longer subsequent duration. These buttons behaved like ones that require more force to depress.

This is very interesting. When we think of multimodal feedback needing to make cognitive sense, synchronization first comes to mind. But there are many more synesthesias in our experience that can only be uncovered through careful reflection. To make an interface feel real, we must first examine reality.

Researchers at the Army Research Office developed a vibrating belt with eight mini actuators — “tactors” — that signify all the cardinal directions. The belt is hooked up to a GPS navigation system, a digital compass and an accelerometer, so the system knows which way a soldier is headed even if he’s lying on his side or on his back.

The tactors vibrate at 250 hertz, which equates to a gentle nudge around the middle. Researchers developed a sort of tactile morse code to signify each direction, helping a soldier determine which way to go, New Scientist explains. A soldier moving in the right direction will feel the proper pattern across the front of his torso. A buzz from the front, side and back tactors means “halt,” a pulsating movement from back to front means “move out,” and so on.

A t-shirt design by Derek Eads.

Recent research reveals some fun facts about aural-tactile synesthesia:

Both hearing and touch, the scientists pointed out, rely on nerves set atwitter by vibration. A cell phone set to vibrate can be sensed by the skin of the hand, and the phone’s ring tone generates sound waves — vibrations of air — that move the eardrum…

A vibration that has a higher or lower frequency than a sound… tends to skew pitch perception up or down. Sounds can also bias whether a vibration is perceived.

The ability of skin and ears to confuse each other also extends to volume… A car radio may sound louder to a driver than his passengers because of the shaking of the steering wheel. “As you make a vibration more intense, what people hear seems louder,” says Yau. Sound, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to change how intense vibrations feel.

Max Mathews, electronic music pioneer, has died.

Though computer music is at the edge of the avant-garde today, its roots go back to 1957, when Mathews wrote the first version of “Music,” a program that allowed an IBM 704 mainframe computer to play a 17-second composition. He quickly realized, as he put it in a 1963 article in Science, “There are no theoretical limits to the performance of the computer as a source of musical sounds.”

Rest in peace, Max.

UPDATE: I haven’t updated this blog in a while, and I realized after posting this that my previous post was about the 2010 Modulations concert. Max Mathews played at Modulations too, and that was the last time I saw him.

I finally got around to recording and mastering the set I played at the CCRMA Modulations show a few months back. Though I’ve been a drum and bass fan for many years, this year’s Modulations was the first time I’d mixed it for others. Hope you like it!

Modulations 2010
Drum & Bass | 40:00 | May 2010

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (mp3, 82.7 MB)


1. Excision — System Check
2. Randomer — Synth Geek
3. Noisia — Deception
4. Bassnectar — Teleport Massive (Bassnectar Remix)
5. Moving Fusion, Shimon, Ant Miles — Underbelly
6. Brookes Brothers — Crackdown
7. The Ian Carey Project — Get Shaky (Matrix & Futurebound’s Nip & Tuck Mix)
8. Netsky — Eyes Closed
9. Camo & Krooked — Time Is Ticking Away feat. Shaz Sparks

Over the last few days this video has been so much bombshell to many of my music-prone friends.

It’s called the Multi-Touch Light Table and it was created by East Bay-based artist/fidget-house DJ Gregory Kaufman. The video is beautifully put together, highlighting the importance of presentation when documenting new ideas.

I really like some of the interaction ideas presented in the video. Others, I’m not so sure about. But that’s all right: the significance of the MTLT is that it’s the first surface-based DJ tool that systematically accounts for the needs of an expert user.

Interestingly, even though it looks futuristic and expensive to us, interfaces like this will eventually be the most accessible artistic tools. Once multi-touch surface are ubiquitous, the easiest way to gain some capability will be to use inexpensive or open-source software. The physical interfaces created for DJing, such as Technics 1200s, are prosthetic objects (as are musical instruments), and will remain more expensive because mechanical contraptions will always be. Now, that isn’t to say that in the future our interfaces won’t evolve to become digital, networked, and multi-touch sensitive, or even that their physicality will be replaced with a digital haptic display. But one of the initial draws of the MTLT—the fact of its perfectly flat, clean interactive surface—seems exotic to us right now, and in the near future it will be default.

Check out this flexible interface called impress. Flexible displays just look so organic and, well impressive. One day these kinds of surface materials will become viable displays and they’ll mark a milestone in touch computing.

It’s natural to stop dancing between songs. The beat changes, the sub-rhythms reorient themselves, a new hook is presented and a new statement is made. But stopping dancing between songs is undesirable. We wish to lose ourselves in as many consecutive moments as possible. The art of mixing music is to fulfill our desire to dance along to continuous excellent music, uninterrupted for many minutes (or, in the best case, many hours) at a time. (Even if we don’t explicitly move our bodies to the music, when we listen our minds are dancing; the same rules apply.)

I don’t remember what prompted me to take that note, but it was probably not that the mixing was especially smooth.



A tomato hailing from Capay, California.

LHCSound is a site where you can listen to sonified data from the Large Hadron Collider. Some thoughts:

  • That’s one untidy heap of a website. Is this how it feels to be inside the mind of a brilliant physicist?
  • The name “LHCSound” refers to “Csound”, a programming language for audio synthesis and music composition. But how many of their readers will make the connection?
  • If they are expecting their readers to know what Csound is, then their explanation of the process they used for sonification falls way short. I want to know the details of how they mapped their data to synthesis parameters.
  • What great sampling material this will make. I wonder how long before we hear electronic music incorporating these sounds.

The Immersive Pinball demo I created for Fortune’s Brainstorm:Tech conference was featured in a BBC special on haptics.

I keep watching the HTC Sense unveiling video from Mobile World Congress 2010. The content is pretty cool, but I’m more fascinated by the presentation itself. Chief marketing officer John Wang gives a simply electrifying performance. It almost feels like an Apple keynote.

The iFeel_IM haptic interface has been making rounds on the internet lately. I tried it at CHI 2010 a few weeks ago and liked it a lot. Affective (emotional haptic) interfaces are full of potential. IFeel_IM mashes together three separate innovations:

  • Touch feedback in several different places on the body: spine, tummy, waist.
  • Touch effects that are generated from emotional language.
  • Synchronization to visuals from Second Life

All are very interesting. The spine haptics seemed a stretch to me, but the butterfly-in-the-tummy was surprisingly effective. The hug was good, but a bit sterile. Hug interfaces need nuance to bring them to the next level of realism.

The fact that the feedback is generated from the emotional language of another person seemed to be one of the major challenges—the software is built to extract emotionally-charged sentences using linguistic models. For example, if someone writes “I love you” to you, your the haptic device on your tummy will react by creating a butterflies-like sensation. As an enaction devotee I would rather actuate a hug with a hug sensor. Something about the translation of words to haptics is difficult for me to accept. But it could certainly be a lot of fun in some scenarios!

I’ve re-recorded my techno mix Awake with significantly higher sound quality. So if you downloaded a copy be sure to replace it with the new file!

Awake

Awake
Techno | 46:01 | October 2009

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download (mp3, 92 MB)


1. District One (a.k.a. Bart Skils & Anton Pieete) — Dubcrystal
2. Saeed Younan — Kumbalha (Sergio Fernandez Remix)
3. Pete Grove — I Don’t Buy It
4. DBN — Asteroidz featuring Madita (D-Unity Remix)
5. Wehbba & Ryo Peres — El Masnou
6. Broombeck — The Clapper
7. Luca & Paul — Dinamicro (Karotte by Gregor Tresher Remix)
8. Martin Worner — Full Tilt
9. Joris Voorn — The Deep

I recently started using Eclipse on OS X and it was so unresponsive, it was almost unusable. Switching tabs was slow, switching perspectives was hella slow. I searched around the web for a solid hour for how to make it faster and finally found the solution. Maybe someone can use it.

My machine is running OS X 10.5, and I have 2 GB of RAM. (This is important because the solution requires messing with how Eclipse handles memory. If you have a different amount of RAM, these numbers may not work and you’ll need to fiddle with them.)

  • Save your work and quit Eclipse.
  • Open the Eclipse application package by right-clicking (or Control-clicking) on Eclipse.app and select “Show Package Contents.”
  • Navigate to Contents→MacOS→, and open “eclipse.ini” in your favorite text editor.
  • Edit the line that starts with -”XX:MaxPermSize” to say “-XX:MaxPermSize=128m”.
  • Before that line, add a line that says “-XX:PermSize=64m”.
  • Edit the line that starts with “-Xms” to say “-Xms40m”.
  • Edit the line that starts ith “-Xmx” to say “-Xmx768m”.
  • Save & relaunch Eclipse.

Worked like a charm for me.

Scroll to Top

To Top

robotics

22

Jan
2010

No Comments

In robotics

By Dave

Living With Robots

On 22, Jan 2010 | No Comments | In robotics | By Dave

I’m very excited for this film. Asimo looks fantastic in it!


I think we’re on the verge of seeing a lot more examination of the relationship between humans and robots.

Tags | , ,

14

Jan
2010

No Comments

In music
robotics

By Dave

Old School vs. New School

On 14, Jan 2010 | No Comments | In music, robotics | By Dave

Tags |

Fingerprint ridge width is coupled to Pacinian resonance

On 05, Jan 2010 | No Comments | In perception, physiology, robotics | By Dave

French scientist Georges Debregeas has published a finding that the width of the ridges of our fingerprints just happens to be optimized for maximally vibrating our nerve endings:

The latest evidence suggests that fingerprints process vibrations in the skin to make them easier for nerves to pick up. They may seem little more than digital decoration, but biomechanics have long known that fingerprints have at least one use: they increase friction, thereby improving grip…

In fact the role that fingerprints play in touch is far more important and subtle than anyone imagined.

…Biologists have known for some time that Pacinian corpuscles are most sensitive to vibrations at 250Hz. So how do fingers generate this kind vibration? Biologists have always assumed that humans can control the frequency of vibrations in the skin by changing the speed at which a finger moves across a surface. But there’s little evidence that people actually do this and the Paris team’s discovery should make this view obsolete.

…They say that fingerprints resonate at certain frequencies and so tend to filter mechanical vibrations. It turns out that their resonant frequency is around 250 Hz. What an astonishing coincidence!

That means that fingerprints act like signal processors, conditioning the mechanical vibrations so that the Pacinian corpuscles can best interpret them…

The article also notes that in robotics this is called morphological computation; that is, computation through interactions of physical form.

Tags | , , , ,

26

Oct
2009

No Comments

In robotics
transhumanism

By Dave

Hand prosthesis with sensitive fingertips

On 26, Oct 2009 | No Comments | In robotics, transhumanism | By Dave


This is the first device of its kind that sends signals back to the brain, allowing the user to have feelings in their fingers and hand. The Smart Hand takes advantage of the phantom limb syndrome which is the sensation amputees have that their missing body part is still attached… By connecting sensors in the hand to the nerve endings in the stump of the arm, patients can feel and control the Smart Hand.

The test patient underwent a complicated, experimental surgical procedure to wire the nerve endings in his stump to an electronic interface. His personal risk will advance science and potentially help millions of people. Thank you, Robin Af Ekenstam.


In the next version I hope they make the Smart Hand’s fingertips get a little bit more sensitive after you clip its fingernails.

(via Engadget)

Tags | , , , , ,

14

Aug
2009

No Comments

In robotics
tactility

By David Birnbaum

Printed strain sensors = "sense of touch"

On 14, Aug 2009 | No Comments | In robotics, tactility | By David Birnbaum


In future, the robot could find its own way. A sensor will endow it with a sense of touch and help it to detect its undersea environment autonomously.

“One component in this tactile capability is a strain gauge,” says Marcus Maiwald…“If the robot encounters an obstacle,” he explains, “the strain gauge is distorted and the electrical resistance changes. The special feature of our strain gauge is that it is not glued but printed on – which means we can apply the sensor to curved surfaces of the robot.”

The sensor system on this robot is not all that complex; strain gauges are literally a dime a dozen (or less). But the configuration of the sensors reminds us of an animal body, and that’s what intrigues us. Since the strain sensors are printed along the surface of the robot in a continuous way (rather than being attached at some specific point), we’re reminded of how touch receptors are embedded throughout the skin, bringing to mind the phrase “sense of touch.” The Roomba has a mechanical sensor that is technically similar to the ones in this new robot, but we don’t talk about the Roomba having a sense of touch because the sensor is in a discrete place. To have a sense of touch you need to be able to sense contact (almost) anywhere on the surface of the body.

Tags | ,

17

Jun
2008

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

Maybe she was born with it; maybe it’s vibe power

On 17, Jun 2008 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

Estée Lauder and Lancôme will soon release vibrating mascaras that promise to coat eyelashes with black stuff in a way human hands could never do alone.

Tags | ,

14

Jun
2008

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

Robotic pre-touch

On 14, Jun 2008 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

Check out Intel’s prehensile manipulator with pre-touch sensing:

Whiskers as haptic sensor arrays

On 26, Feb 2008 | No Comments | In cognition, neuroscience, physiology, robotics | By David Birnbaum

Whiskers provide animals with complex perceptual content. In fact, all the things that whiskers actually do are fascinating.

The dimensionality of the data can be modeled according to how an animal moves them through space:

Rat whiskers move actively in one dimension, rotating at their base in a plane roughly parallel to the ground. When the whiskers hit an object, they can be deflected backwards, upwards or downwards by contact with the object. The mechanical bending of the whisker activates many thousands of sensory receptors located in the follicle at the whisker base. The receptors, in turn, send neural signals to the brain, where a three-dimensional image is presumably generated.

Hartmann and Solomon showed that their robotic whiskers could extract information about object shape by “whisking” (sweeping) the whiskers across a small sculpted head, which was chosen specifically for its complex shape. As the whiskers move across the object, strain gauges sense the bending of the whiskers and thus determine the location of different points on the head. A computer program then “connects the dots” to create a three-dimensional representation of the object.

More on that “three-dimensional image” from the end of the first paragraph — whiskers indeed construct a high resolution spatial map:

Based on discoveries in primates and cats, scientists previously thought that highly refined maps representing the complexities of the external world were the exclusive domain of the visual cortex in mammals. This new map is a miniature schematic, representing the direction a whisker is moved when it brushes against an object.

“This study is a great counter example to the prevailing view that only the visual cortex has beautiful, overlapping, multiplexed maps,” said Christopher Moore, a principal investigator at the McGovern Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where he holds the Mitsui Career Development Chair.

Researchers are now working towards developing code for a whisker-like sensor array to be used for robotics. Could this software have human interface applications as well?

This reminds me of the impressive and thought-provoking Haptic Radar/Extended Skin Project. Although the sensing medium in that case was ultrasound rather than a deformable, physical substrate, and the resolution of the stimulators much lower, the researchers state that they intend to make the system more whisker-like as they develop it.

[via Science Daily]

Tags | ,

18

Feb
2008

No Comments

In physiology
robotics

By David Birnbaum

Compact tactile sensors

On 18, Feb 2008 | No Comments | In physiology, robotics | By David Birnbaum

Man, would I ever love to get ahold of one of these tactile sensors developed for the Shadow Robot Company. Responding to pressure ranging between 0.1 N and 25 N using a quantum tunneling composite material, each sensor has up to 34 individual sensing units, on-board digital signal conditioning, and is the size of a human fingertip. I would bet that this sensor could be used to crudely model the non-pacinian 3 (np3) psychophysical sensory channel, which constructs an acute neural image of skin deformation.

A development kit is available for £1450, which includes one sensor and some interfacing materials. That’s a bit out of my range, but if someone from Shadow is reading this, I will give you free publicity if you send me a sample!

(via aiGuru)

Tags |

16

Feb
2008

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

From the Painfully Obvious Department of Future Studies

On 16, Feb 2008 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

It seems like gender studies professor David Levy has been reading some Kurzweil: Are robots the sex partners of the future?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is available in his book, Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relations.

Tags | , , ,

22

Dec
2007

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

On Fembots and Gynoids

On 22, Dec 2007 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

With the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the idea that in fifty years the Russians would be using gynoids to seduce men and compromise security might have seemed plausible. Fact:

A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.

The artificial intelligence of CyberLover’s automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the “bot” from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.

“As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering,” PC Tools senior malware analyst Sergei Shevchenko said in a statement.

Among CyberLover’s creepy features is its ability to offer a range of different profiles from “romantic lover” to “sexual predator.” It can also lead victims to a “personal” Web site, which could be used to deliver malware, PC Tools said.

Combine software like this and a (hot) robot hardware platform and you would have the most powerful human intelligence tool in history. Sounds like a job for haptics!

Tags | , , , , ,

14

Dec
2007

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

The Pleo snuff tape

On 14, Dec 2007 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

At least one person feels that watching Pleo being tortured can be traumatizing, if not on the same level as watching real animal torture, at least on the same spectrum. I can see where she was coming from. My own emotional reaction was to first feel disturbed, and then amused at the fact that I was feeling honest disgust, then disturbed again, then more amusement, etc., until the arrival of the final frame, full of bitterness and death; I held my breath for a moment or two, and then burst out laughing.

Tags | ,

11

Dec
2007

One Comment

In music
robotics

By David Birnbaum

Problems and prospects for Gibson’s self-tuning guitar

On 11, Dec 2007 | One Comment | In music, robotics | By David Birnbaum

Gibson has announced a guitar with a built-in self-tuning mechanism. Some have suggested that there is a problem with allowing people to skip learning how to tune a guitar before they play it, because tuning helps develop the ear. I think this is a valid concern, and readers of my papers would know I don’t think lowering the entry fee for musical instrumental interaction is, in itself, a “good thing.” At the same time, there are plenty of advantages offered by a self-tuning guitar that have nothing at all to do with ear training, such as avoiding the need to bring a capo to gigs, or to bring more than one guitar to a show for quickly playing two consecutive songs than require drastically different guitar tunings. (Besides, there are plenty of other excellent ways to train your ear.) Quick but accurate tuning changes will also surely be exploited in composition; tuning changes can be done in the middle of a piece, and the musical capabilities and quirkiness of the auto-tuner could even be used for some as-yet-unknown artistic end.

What I find especially interesting is how the words “world’s first robot guitar” are tossed around in this press release. First of all, it seems as if the word “robot” is being used vaguely to refer to the presence of a servo system. If this guitar is robotic, then so is my laptop for its ability to read and eject optical media. I think we’re going to see more of this, similar to the way “net” was overused in the nineties. We are entering a robo-sheik era where any product that can possibly justify doing so will be incorporating the word “robot” into its name.

As for the “world’s first” claim, someone should tell Gibson about TransPerformance, the company that has already been selling automatic tuner retrofits since 2005, as well as the dozens of other music technology projects that are based on guitar interaction and involve motors. It’s old, but anyone who hasn’t yet seen the League of Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) video of the LEMUR Guitar Bot should check it out:

It’s easier for me to accept calling the LEMUR Guitar Bot a “robot” than the Gibson self-tuner. What do you think?

Tags | , ,

08

Nov
2007

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

Robot sensitive to social touching

On 08, Nov 2007 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

A QRIO, modified to respond to social touching with giggles, attended a kindergarden class and became accepted by the human children:

In the study, QRIO was introduced into a classroom of toddlers aged 18 months to 24 months. Children of this age group were chosen because they have no preconceived notions of robots and they communicate using touch as much as speech.

“The children accepted the presence of QRIO very well,” Movellan told LiveScience. “There were a few children who were very interested but maintained distance. Over time, the relationship between children and QRIO evolved positively.”

In phase I of the experiment, which lasted 27 sessions, QRIO was instructed to interact with the children using its full behavioral repertoire, which included head-turning, dancing and giggling. At first, the children would touch the robot on its face, but as they warmed to him, the majority of their touches were to its hands and arms — a pattern the children also displayed toward each other.

During phase II, which lasted 15 sessions, QRIO ignored the children’s touches and danced throughout the session. “At that point, the [children] quickly lost interest,” Movellan said.

When QRIO’s ability to respond to touch and giggle were returned for three sessions in phase III, the children became friendly with the robot again.

When robot’s batteries died and it laid on the floor, some of the children cried.

Others put a blanket over him and said, “nigh-nigh.”

And further down in the same article:

The ability to respond to touch is relatively easy to program into robots, Movellan said. “We had things like computer vision in the robot, and touch was the easiest thing,” he said. “And it turned out to be the most important to get things going.”

A lot of energy is focused on developing computer vision, neural networks, and other AI-type technology, which is great. But touch interfaces are inexpensive, relatively easy to engineer, and very effective at engaging human emotion. I think this study implies that, for the purposes of social acceptance, touch may be the most important human-robot interaction mode.

Tags | , ,

12

Oct
2007

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

Green groper

On 12, Oct 2007 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

U-Tsu-Shi-O-Mi combines a head mounted display and a robot to create a tangible avatar:

I like this idea. Since light, inexpensive, portable force-reflecting handheld interfaces are a long way off, why not couple physical objects with virtual vision technology to touch virtual objects? Moreover, using ocular displays, I could imagine a similar system for changing the appearance of our robotic companions on the fly, forgoing the need, for instance, to mechanize their facial expressions.

(via Gizmodo, Pink Tentacle, Robot Watch)

Tags | , ,

23

Mar
2007

No Comments

In robotics

By David Birnbaum

Beatbots: Socially rhythmic robots

On 23, Mar 2007 | No Comments | In robotics | By David Birnbaum

OMGHI2Beatbots!

(via Joe Malloch.)

Tags |