/ News
Japanese Robot Actroid Gets More Social, Has No Fear of Crowds
Actroid-SIT, a lifelike robot from Japanese firm Kokoro, hasn't received as much attention as her cousin Geminoid F, which happens to be a copy a real woman. But while Geminoid F is a teleoperated robot, Actroid-SIT can function autonomously, talking and gesturing while interacting with people. In fact, researchers have recently demonstrated how improvements to Actroid's behavior can make it look smarter and more expressive than your average android.
Actroid now makes eye contact and gestures in the direction of a person trying to speak to her, allowing it to adeptly handle crowds of people. To develop the new behavior, researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology studied how individuals and groups interacted with the robot. Based on their observations, they focused on two new features, which they call "interruptibility" and "motion parameterization," hoping to improve human-robot interaction.
The first feature lets Actroid-SIT to handle interruptions in a graceful way. In their human-robot interaction experiments, the researchers noted that interruptions occurred about 26 percent of the time. For example, the human switched topics or handed off the speaking role to someone else. The problem is that despite these interruptions, the robot would obliviously carry on until it finished its spiel. Not very socially elegant!
With the new “interruptibility” feature, the robot can immediately end its current topic and elegantly transition to the new response. Those few seconds count—people interacted significantly longer with the robot when it was interruptible.
Who are you gesturing to?
The researchers also tested Actroid-SIT with a "motion parameterization" system. This means that her 18 gestures, like “pointing” or “waving”, adapt to the location of the speaker, making the person feel like the robot is really paying attention to him or her.
So even though talking with the Actroid is still far from a natural conversation, the researchers say this improvement makes a big difference in how people perceive the robot. Participants called the android more friendly, sensitive, sophisticated, and warm when the new gesturing system was used, compared to a normal gesturing approach.
Take a look at this video to see how people react to her, and how Actroid now can handle even a mob of pesky schoolchildren.
“A Gesture-Centric Android System for Multi-Party Human-Robot Interaction” by Yutaka Kondo, Kentaro Takemura, Jun Takamatsu, and Tsukasa Ogasawara of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology was presented early this month at the Human Robot Interaction 2013 conference in Tokyo.
Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/japanese-robot-actroid-sit
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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