"It really did seem like the fairies, the robot fairies were characters in the production, and not just flying props." Adapting to the robotic thespians wasn’t much of a challenge for the human actors and actresses, producers said, and researchers used the opportunity to study how humans respond to flying machines. Seven fluttering quadcopters played the role of fairies in a 2009 production of Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer’s Night Dream" at Texas A&M University. Among the less controversial uses of the flying contraptions may be as extras in stage productions - say in Elizabethan comedies, even. skies to commercial drones by 2015, and Americans from the halls of Congress to one small town in Colorado where some residents want to snipe the aerial robots from the skies have made their views known. Knight said she’s at work on other projects that will help robots understand non-verbal human communication - even such everyday signs such as when two people pass one another on the street and signal that they’re too busy to stop and talk. Jonathan Sanger / NBC News fileĭata made his first public appearance at a TED Talk in 2011, and has his own Twitter feed with more than 1,000 followers.
Heather Knight, left, of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, presents with Data, the world's first robot comedian in New York, in October 2013. Data feeds “off the reality of what’s happening to create a more real, more authentic interaction,” Knight said.
Named for the Star Trek character and packing a database pre-loaded with quips and one-liners, Data responds to cues like the volume of the audience’s laughter to readjust when a joke flops. And while Data’s timing might be a little mechanical - Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres are safe for now - Knight is set on developing what she calls “more charismatic machines.” She’s the creator of Data, a wise-cracking comedian robot that feeds off information from its audience to decide which joke to tell next.
#Shiny robots full#
student at Carnegie Mellon University, is determined to make robots do something plenty of people can’t without a few drinks – make a room full of people laugh. But there’s scientific value to the acts, too, and stage-ready robots - including fire-breathing carnival acts and chatty humanoids who’ve entertained audiences from Abu Dhabi to Vietnam - are aiding researchers who want to build robots people find less, well, robotic. So it may make sense that drones and droids are joining their human creators in some of mankind’s oldest art forms, performing in front of audiences from the United States to the nightclubs of Japan. "The women dance, the robots dance - we can’t explain it, it’s a crazy show."Īll the world’s a stage, and robots are playing a bigger part in it, working alongside employees in factories and labs. "You go there to watch shiny robots dance to Gangnam Style.” "You don’t go there for the food,” as one Tokyo blogger put it. But it’s the bots that are the main attraction. Abrams, Baz Luhrmann and Guillermo del Toro have all popped up in the audience, and Anthony Bourdain filmed a segment of his show at the restaurant. Initially a magnet for middle-aged Japanese men, it earned a spot on the Tokyo tourist map after a smattering of celebrity appearances.
In the absence of a soul, eyes are the gateway to the face, and in the case of a big, heavy robot with potentially limitless mobility, they offer insight (along with body language) about the system’s direction and intention.Since it opened in fall 2012, this robot cabaret has struck it big. It’s a shiny, white oblong structure with sensors on the sides, a pair of large, blinking LED eyes on the front and a third light on the rear. I suspect that both the original Digit and its predecessor Cassie both elicited their fair share of comments over the years.ĭigit 2.0 arrives at ProMat this week with a minimalist head. I’ve seen all sorts of different varieties and it takes a lot to creep me out (though it’s absolutely still possible), but I’m sympathetic to that visceral reaction upon seeing a headless robot walking around. It’s also clear why Agility created a face for the 2.0 version of its digit robot. There are several studies out there investigating the science behind robot faces and what varieties are best suited for which job. Once you begin to understand these sorts of things, it’s clear why a lot of companies have spent a lot of money consulting behavioral scientists and employing animators from places like Pixar and DreamWorks.
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