Colleague and labmate, Tiffany Chen, pointed out an interesting new robot named "MeBot" from MIT's Personal Robotics Group.  Later this week, MeBot will be presented at the conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2010) in Osaka, Japan.  The associated paper, "MeBot: A Robotic Platform for Socially Embodied Presence," has been nominated for best paper.  In a nutshell, MeBot is a semi-autonomous robotic avatar that provides rich, remote interaction by conveying non-verbal channels of social communication in addition to video, something that is not provided by existing phone and video conferencing.  The expressiveness of MeBot is impressive.  It reminds me of the (now well-known) CrabFu Swashbot, but ups the ante by including video capabilities.  Be sure to check out the videos and photos below to see what I mean.

Following up on last week's article about building robot hands with compliant under-actuated fingers, I'd like to examine a technique to build aesthetic shells for robot heads using a combination of 3D-printed master forms, silicone molds, and quick-setting plastic final products.  The technique examined was used by MIT alum Cory Kidd to build 18 prototypes of the Autom weight-loss coach for his PhD dissertation, a product that is being continuously refined at Cory's new startup, Intuitive Automata.  This technique seems a bit involved; I probably would have just outsourced a full 3D printed ABS version of the head, especially since there were 18 of them.  However, I always find these advanced robot fabrication techniques enlightening.

With micro / pico projectors being sold for under $250, and robot toy maker Wowwee getting in the game, it was only a matter of time before projectors would be found on robots -- especially since the general concept dates back at least three decades to R2D2's holographic projections in the original Star Wars trilogy.  In fact, Hizook previously examined a number of robots with projectors used to communicate intention.   Following the development of a laser pointer interface by the Healthcare Robotics Lab (to which I belong), myself and numerous labmates ruminated about the marrying of these two technologies -- it seemed a natural extension of the "Clickable World", wherein the world is composed of virtual buttons or icons selected via a laser pointer analogous to a PC mouse, to include visual feedback via an on-robot projector.  It seems ideas rarely stand in isolation; I'm now aware of two robotic systems that use both video projectors and laser pointer interfaces.  The first is a very preliminary "late breaking results" submission to HRI 2009, while the other is a fully-realized system developed in JST's ERATO program.  The latter research happens to have a compelling video, embedded below.

We've seen robots controlled with projector interfaces and laser-pointer interfaces, and now we can add tabletop interfaces to the list.  My labmate, Hai Nguyen, pointed out the CRISTAL project from the Media Interaction Lab at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences.  The CRYSTAL project is an interesting "smart home" technology that uses a tabletop interface (similar to Microsoft's Surface) and a ceiling-mounted camera to display and control household electronics such as lights, TVs, digital picture frames, and robots!  To command the robot, the user "draws" the desired robot path on the tabletop computer using their finger.  The robot then follows the route via optical tracking through the ceiling-mounted camera. Interesting interaction, and its always good to see robots become sufficiently ubiquitous that they're classified (and controlled) in the same manner as other home electronics.  Check out a video of the interaction below.

Dr. Andrea Thomaz of Georgia Tech's Socially Intelligent Machines Lab was recently awarded the prestigious "MIT Tech Review 2009 Young Innovators Under 35", an honor shared with last year's robotics recipient, Andrew Ng.  Simultaneous to this fantastic news, Andrea's lab unveiled an amazing new robot named Simon (see photos and videos below).  Simon features an articulated torso, dual 7-DOF arms, and anthropomorphic hands from Meka Robotics along with an expressive head designed at Georgia Tech.  Simon is designed to study human-robot interaction from a social learning vantage, such as learning by demonstration and human-robot collaboration.  I'm very enthralled for Andrea, and I'm proud to have taken her graduate research course on human-robot interaction while at Georgia Tech. 

The iconic Pixar animated lamp, Luxo Jr., unofficially debuted in animatronic form at Disney's Hollywood Studios in late June (videos below).  Both the animated and animatronic Luxo Jrs. have remarkable anthropomorphic emotive capabilities in spite of their simple, non-human form.  This reminds me of conversations in Dr. Andrea Thomaz's human-robot interaction course about applying animation techniques to design more effective social robots -- clearly Disney's Imagineers have perfected this art.

Describing science as "beautiful" makes perfect sense to me; I believe the physics experiments described in The Prism and the Pendulum are on par with the greatest paintings and sculptures ever conceived!   However, I'm having difficulties classifying the $30,000 robot, Keepon:  Is it a research robot, an art-robot, or both?  On one hand, there is evidence supporting its role in important robotics research.  On the other hand, there are the numerous (many more?) whimsical videos of Keepon dancing to music or traveling the world, such as the "Keepon Goes Seoul-Searching" video to be shown on Friday at the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) 2009 conference (we show this video below).  Having seen Keepon in person, I can attest to its "cuteness" factor and quality design... but my questions are: "Where is the line between art and research drawn?"  "Does such a line, necessarily, exist?" and "How can HRI researchers and peer-reviewers objectively evaluate important robotics research that also possesses strong artistic components?"  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Back in May 2008 it was announced that CMU professors Sara Kiesler and Jodi Forlizzi (from the HCI Institute) and Paul Rybski (from the Robotics Institute) were awarded $500k in Microsoft's Human-Robot Interaction funding to develop a social, snack-selling robot to traverse Newell-Simon and Wean halls (press release).  After seeing a prototype appear on Flickr in July, we've all been waiting patiently to see pictures of the final version.  Well, the wait is over -- photos of the new CMU snackbot, conceptual designs, and construction photos are contained below!  It appears that the CMU team is progressing nicely.

The folks at Dr. Matsumaru's Bio-Robotics & Human-Mechatronics Laboratory have worked on some very interesting human-robot interaction projects.  I'm particularly interested in their video-projector interfaces.  In one scenario, the video projector shows the robot's intended motion trajectory.  In another scenario, dubbed the "Step-On Interface" or SOI, users step on projected "buttons" to control the robot.  According to videos (below), Dr. Matsumaru is targeting home-based service robots.  Read on for videos and more information about the video projector robot interfaces, as well as some others (using visible lasers, LCDs, and Persistence of Vision or POV displays).

There has been a lot of press in the last six months revolving around El-E, the autonomous mobile manipulation platform for the motor impaired out of Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab (to which I belong).  There was a report in the NY Times on El-E's laser-pointer interface, and now a report in MIT Tech Review on El-E behaving like a service dog.  Recently, the lab's director (and my advisor) Dr. Charlie Kemp, gave an impressive talk at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute (CMU-RI) where he adeptly ties together these research initiatives and makes a compelling case for more autonomous mobile manipulators for the motor impaired.  Read on for the CMU-RI video and some choice images and themes from the talk.

OK, I know what everyone is thinking... "What is this craziness? Inter-Galactic Love?" Well, let's just attribute it to a poor Japanese-English translation -- the title should have been left at just "Hinokio," which is a play on words from the old, classic film title "Pinocchio."  In my opinion, this is the second-best robot movie of all time in terms of robot realism and "cool" humanoid robots (second to I-Robot), though it does posses some of those cheesy Japanese memes.  The movie is about a Japanese boy who is unable to walk and thus uses a telepresence, humanoid robot to experience life; everything the robot sees, hears, and feels, so does the boy. The film has amazing graphics and cinematography, and the human-robot interaction techniques are very well thought-out. I'd recommend everyone grab a copy and watch it; it's definitely worth the time. Read further for more detailed information and some very cool images from the film.