The basic idea of ​​robotics and eight smaller ideas

Don't know what to do on the weekend? Ball of robots extended until July 20!

In the last post about the ball of robots, there was a lot of criticism about the exhibition. Like, the robots are all miserable, clumsy and made "on the knee." Well, this is how to look. This is an exhibition of prototypes, each of which is a garage implementation of an idea. Behind a heap of gears and microcircuits one can’t always see what the robot was made for, but it was the idea that became the main factor in selecting robots for the exhibition. Why not write about it?

Read the post. And perhaps you will go to the exhibition with a different look.



Vitruvian man - a drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci around 1490 as an illustration for a book dedicated to the works of Vitruvius . His treatise "Ten Books on Architecture ”is the only surviving antique work on architecture and our entire civilization is based on it. For any robotics, Vitruvius should be a reference book.

The main idea of ​​the book is known to everyone, it says that "Man is the measure of all things." The entire architecture of the planet is based on human proportions. All engineering structures are made for people. Everything around us is created for human use and, of course, robots will fully copy it.

Such anthropomorphic robots have probably already been created and are standing in secret laboratories, underground factories, military bases and homes of crazy scientists. And we have to be content with our imagination. The exhibition features 40 robots, each of which implements only a few functions of a mechanical person. But all together - they are a complete copy of a living person. The task of the exhibition is to combine these parts into a single whole with the help of your imagination.

That is why, next to each robot there is an indication of which part of the body of the “android” he represents, whether he thinks himself or is controlled by the operator.

And since the best fantasy works for children, you can find next to it the indicated age for which the robot is designed.

Well and most importantly - a little story is written about each robot, where, among other things, it is noted where it came from to us.

1. Robot Tespian

Robot "Tespian" ( RoboThespian ) - an interactive android robot that loves and knows how to communicate with people. He was born in the most futuristic place in England, under the dome of the Eden Project in Cornwall.



Here he was assembled in 2005 to participate in the experimental robot theater, Tespian was made as interactive as possible, and he immediately fell in love with the public. 10 years later, the Thespian robot from Engineered Arts Ltd., along with Angela Merkel and David Cameron, opened CeBit 2014 in Hanover in March this year.



Tespian can change facial expressions and voice, greet guests, recognize people, repeat their movements, determine the gender and mood of the interlocutor, tell stories, read poetry, show presentations and play like a real actor. Tespian can be programmed for any creative and educational activity.

The robot is controlled from the terminal: the operator exercises direct control, including remotely. But the robot itself is able to interact with people: talk in English, turn to people and parody them. Tespian can repeat a phrase after you, answer a simple mathematical question, give a definition of a word, at the request of a pose or even learn a new phrase. And he perfectly succeeds in scenes from films.

But all this is just a set of pre-recorded programs launched by the operator. Thespian himself does not think that makes him an ideal actor or servant.

There is no doubt that the first generations of home robots will have similar intelligence - only a set of programs. This is more than enough to clean the apartment, go shopping or do homework for you.

But things are joking, and similar robots can soon begin to pose a serious threat to living actors - unlike a person who can access only a certain set of types, robots on stage are able to cover the whole range of assigned role-playing tasks.

To imagine the future of the entertainment industry, just remember the fate of silent films.



Then in France reigned Russian actors who fled from the revolution. Of course, they were superprofessionals, and the level of silent film acting was much higher than the modern one. Actors of those years did just incredible things, for example, conveyed drama and content of scenes with only facial expressions. It’s the same as playing Evgeny Onegin with a troupe of 20 mimes.

With 20 thespians it’s even easier than with live actors, they also highlight emotions with lights.

Of course, now the robot is a prototype with gears outside, but this gives it the well-known charm inherent in all “garage prototypes”. It is enough to recall what the first personal computer looked like - Steve Jobs and Wozniak assembled it in their garage in a wooden case!



And the first laptop was generally housed in a shabby diplomat - then the audience laughed at these new products, but now, the descendants of these cute "freaks" are in every house. So draw conclusions.

2. A2D2

Statistics show that installing surveillance cameras reduces crime and hooliganism hundreds of times. No one is watching live on the camera’s field of view.

At best, there is one operator on nine screens. The rest of the cameras either record, or even worse, are dummies. However, this is enough - when a person knows that he is in the frame, he always behaves prudently.

However, the cameras are motionless, easy to get around, and they will not make you any remarks.

But what if you put the camera on a mobile platform, equip the display and manipulators? Then it will be possible to “interact with the audience” manually, sitting elsewhere behind your iPad.

At school, for example, the children of the robot listen more.



But what about the main advantage of cameras - autonomy?

So with a robot even better! No one will know when the operator controls it, and when it operates autonomously - just put the Kinect sensor and write a recognition of faces, emotions and gestures. Then you can quite successfully simulate the presence of the operator and even change his mood as necessary.

A2D2 security robot is a school security robot operating on the principle of telepresence. That is, a person will control it remotely.

Its peculiarity is that it can perform autonomous monitoring of the premises, and the person managing it can be in any country in the world. In addition to other “tricks,” programs can read, that is, independently determine the emotions of people.

A2D2 is a mobile remote-controlled robot. A display is built into his head, on which the image of the operator is visible.

He also sees the interlocutor, can rotate the head of the robot in two planes, move the manipulators (they have five degrees of mobility) - for example, point somewhere, express your emotion with a gesture, or even hug the person with whom he is talking. The robot moves at a maximum speed of 5 km / h and on a flat floor has high maneuverability. The A2D2-based mobile platform is equipped with eight sensors that help the robot not to collide with surrounding objects. The robot is able to act without control: to recognize and repeat emotions using the built-in Kinect, independently conduct dialogue and go through mazes. A2D2 can be connected to a power outlet, and the built-in battery will provide 4-6 hours of battery life.

3. Alice

Man and anthropoid apes are sharply distinguished not only by their outstanding intellect, but also by the structure of their hands. Man's brushes are the same crown of evolution as his mind. This is a complex engineering device, perhaps unparalleled in the animal kingdom. With our palm you can row as an oar, put it in a fist and beat like a stone, or you can thread a needle or read the Brael alphabet to the touch. The hand is delightful, and rightfully is a symbol of the physical perfection of man.

The fist is the same primary and strong symbol as the skull. Actually, man consists of these two parts, the rest is the standard “chassis” for all hominids.



Remember “Terminator2” - in it the whole image of the killer robot is built on a mechanical arm (only she later left it with a piece of the processor). He shows the same hand to a fanatical scientist.



In 1991, it seemed the highest proof of the perfection of the science of the future - a six-core processor and a hand repeating the human Really, a serious achievement for 1991. But, as you see, today such hands can be collected in the Zelenograd garage.

Alice's hand is built on soft pneumatics from parts created on a 3D printer. The design repeats the human and has all its degrees of freedom. That is, if it was made of steel, it would have to be lowered into molten metal to prevent scientists from creating a skynet!



In addition to the hand, Alice also has a face with 13 facial muscles. Thanks to speech recognition and elements of artificial intelligence, “Alice” can conduct a dialogue with a person, while she reacts to his emotions and is able to repeat them. It’s also a prototype, but it allows you to reflect a sufficient palette of all the basic emotions of a person and demonstrate the ability to create copies of the faces of real people.

These two technologies demonstrate the company's ability to create a fully human-like robot. They have already created the two most complex components with one 3D printer and a dozen students from Bauman.

4. Pushkin

If we had the opportunity to resurrect the great people of the past, we would, of course, start with the best representatives of art. It would be nice to listen to the dialogue of Socrates in the original performance or to discuss quantum physics with Einstein. But whom to resurrect first? Whose voice to return from the darkness of centuries?



If Socrates was the pioneer of philosophy, then who “started” the Russian language?

I mean modern, literary Russian, created by the government by the very end of the 18th century (before this Russian literary language simply did not exist, remember how Peter1 and his contemporaries wrote).

What is the difference between Pushkin and the writers of an earlier era? Karamzin completed the formation of the Russian language, and Pushkin spoke for the first time in it, with all modulations and turns. Pushkin's speech is our speech. There are still archisms and gallicisms, but this is not noticeable in the general stream. We are all Pushkins, this is our culture. Speaking Russian even with Derzhavin is a problem. I think, most of all, it will be like talking to a Serb or a self-taught person who has learned Russian.

Pushkin was the first person to speak in literary Russian, and his speech was like a peal of thunder - the great Russian literature was born. That is why, Neurobotics chose Alexander Sergeyevich as a prototype for her first robot.



Imagine that Einstein could teach physics lessons as well, Mendeleev could teach chemistry, that Peter the Great would tell how he decided to build St. Petersburg or how he cut beards to boyars. Such lessons will be remembered forever.

The head of an anthropomorphic robot with a standard mount includes everything you need to see and hear, open your mouth and express emotions, follow a person’s eyes, sing and read poetry, maintain a dialogue with the interlocutor. True, to modulate speech, the usual function of its recognition by the Google search engine is used. Pushkin’s head can be docked with other modules: torso, arms and a mobile platform, but can be used separately. Like the head of Professor Dowell.

5. R.BOT

Communication emulators, augmented reality, maps and guides are a rather promising genre of applications for tablets, as well as video calls. But they will always miss the “body” for full independence. It’s one thing to carry an audioguide in your hand and quite another to follow the gallery in the wake of a real guide capable of maintaining a dialogue with you.



That’s exactly what they decided at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and launched the “digital guide”. The truth is not in offline mode - it is controlled by the remote operator Anton. Anton does not have the ability to move independently - he moves with the help of a wheelchair. He learned about R.bot through the organizers of the charity project "Foto CHE" and volunteered to help with virtual tours and photography workshops.

This happens as follows: from his personal computer, right from home, Anton connects to the robot via the Internet and is completely transferred to the place where R.bot is installed. The robot speakers become Anton’s ears, the camera - the eyes, and the microphone transmits either what Anton says or the text that he types on the keyboard. The movement of the robot and the turns of its head are controlled using the buttons on the keyboard. By the way, its “cervical” mechanism has 4 degrees of freedom, which allows you to turn your head in 4 planes, that is, in all directions necessary for a full view. Thus, the robot completely transfers Anton to the museum, allowing him to feel his presence there and communicate interactively.

In addition to the fact that Anton has the opportunity to visit the museum without leaving his home, he also helps other people who are connected to the robot, see the exhibits of the museum, visit a tour and chat with visitors.



The Synergy Swan model is a mobile chassis to which an Android smartphone is attached. This robot got the name “Swan” for a reason: when its neck unfolds or stretches, it really begins to resemble a swan. You can control the robot and see the picture from the smartphone’s camera using the client application for any operating system, including mobile.

R.BOT Synergy Mime - a series of very small robots. Functionally, they are similar to Swan, but do not have wheels. But these robots are tiny and serve as a stand and charging for a mobile phone. The operator of such a robot can raise and lower the phone and rotate Mime around its axis to see what is happening around.

6. Paul

Thunderstorm of all Arbat artists!

This robot will draw a portrait of a man in twenty minutes. To do this, he will need to see the face through the camera, then apply a unique algorithm to the image, which will turn the photo into a work of robotic art.



You probably remember a similar device from the movie Bladerunner. Only there did it scan the emotional response and reveal soulless androids. Well, our apparatus no worse reveals the artistic value of a human face, turning it into a work of art - in forty years this portrait will cost like a whole robot. Around how now is a portrait of some famous artist of the early twentieth century.

"Pavel" draws with a regular ballpoint pen in his hand. Do not miss the opportunity to get your portrait from the hands of the robot - it’s still a unique thing, if you don’t say it. And one can hope that someday, Paul will be able to swipe at a large format. Extremely laborious and large-scale work - in Russia only one person draws in a similar style, and he does not do it quickly. And the robot would be able to "print" any canvas without any tension.


This 4x2 meter “Novonovosibirsk” painting is also painted with a ballpoint pen, but by a man - Russian artist Alexei Gintovt.

The creator of the robot is Patrick Tresse., French artist and programmer. His goal was to give the machine the ability to not just mechanically reproduce the image. “Paul” paints as if a person were working on a picture. The algorithm embedded in the robot is based on modeling human perception and movements of the artist’s hand.

7. Pinokio

This lamp is like a living lamp , it recognizes faces and behaves depending on their expression - it can flirt or, conversely, turn away. And if you try to turn it off - she will switch the toggle switch back, as if nothing had happened. Actually, the embodiment of the fabulous idea of ​​revived furniture is art itself at the Disney level.



But the Pinocchio lamp goes further and creates a “cross-cultural phenomenon” - after all, the attitude to things in Russian and European cultures is very different.

Russian and German attitude to a thing: for Western culture, a thing is a victorious roar of battle tubes, the power of the world, a symbol of possession of it. For a Russian, a thing is a mistake, something not living, but not dead, and therefore miserable. Things are the ulcers of the world. The pre-revolutionary philosopher, Vasily Rozanov, is the only, relatively clearly expressed this primary and therefore elusive feeling:

“I am sad that everything is imperfect: but not in the sense that things do not fulfill some commandment, some expectation from them (and it doesn’t come to mind), but that things themselves are somehow not good, they are not satisfied it hurts. What hurts things is my constant suffering for all my life. Tenderness painfully passes through it. Things seem to me somehow offended, some orphans, someone loves them a little, someone appreciates them a little. There is something impoverished and sinister at the same time ... ”

It is this unexplored sector of culture that the creator of the robot, Adam Ben-Dror, is exploring. As part of this project, he tried to explore the possibility of “reviving” an inanimate object and make it as expressive and responsive as possible. It turned out weird. On the one hand, I feel sorry for the lamp - it is so lively and will stand on the table. On the other hand, the lamp is so cute and charming that the heart breaks and you want to take it with you and put it on your desktop.



That is why the PIXAR screensaver evokes such conflicting feelings - it simply is not designed for viewers from Russian culture. Our revived thing is touching, sweet, but at the same time tragic, in need of our care and protection.

The thing that came to life in Russia is Mitten, which is where all the primary and deep-seated attitude of our culture towards things is expressed:

8. Baxter

As you know, biology poses one of the key distinctive features - the way of nutrition. The structure of the jaws and the shape of the teeth can tell a lot about the diet and behavior of the animal. The same classification method applies to people.

All human cultures come from diet. Literally! For example, what is the difference between Asians and Indo-Europeans? In the same way, what is the difference between rice and wheat. For example, growing European bread is a job for the lazy. Bread grows by itself, without needing special care or watering. Plowing is relatively easy - it's two months a year. Sowing bread is a simple spread of seeds. The use of yeast allows you to heartily eat literally a handful of grain. The daily rate for living is two tablespoons of flour. You can live long on two spoons.



That is, peasants with such a production cycle have a lot of free time. But only predators have a lot of free time. Herbivores are always “at work”. They chew and digest food. Digesting bread, as well as producing, is also easy. Rich bread, this is not sweet potato, which need to fill the intestines to the stop. The paradox is that bread is "vegetable meat", and rotated with minimal effort.

The bread culture itself stimulates intellectual activity, because a person has a lot of free time. Not for individuals, but for the whole mass.

Complaints about the overwhelmingness of rural labor appear when subsistence farming is destroyed and there is a desire to collect excess bread. This peasants are extremely annoying, because long physical labor is unusual for them. Cries and groans begin, greatly exaggerating the hardships of agricultural production. A farm laborer is equated with a hard worker, which of course is not true. Fellowship is voluntary - the farm laborer works for a fee, the general mood of farm laborers is cheerful. These are the "shabashniki". Well, etc.



Another thing fig. It requires monotonous and daily painstaking work. Every day he has to weed, bent over in three doom. At the same time, not only industriousness is developing, but also intelligence - the fact is that the rice crop is mathematically precisely related to the amount of labor invested - how many fertilizers are added, how much water is poured - you will collect so many grains. Here, every peasant considers as a professor of mathematics or a wolf on a hunt.

As a result, Asians and Europeans formed largely opposing cultures. At the same time, Asians are generally smarter, more diligent and pedantic - just look at the successes of Chinese students in mathematics. In American universities, white fades against their background. But wheat gives an important advantage - due to the mass of free time, Europeans are much stronger in dialectics and, therefore, the invention of a new one. As a result, by the beginning of the 21st century, we came to a bipolar world in which Europeans design iPhones, Chinese collect, and Americans sell.



So it was before the creation of Baxter'a- It is designed to free millions of Chinese workers from assembly line assembly. His two hands are completely human, and he is very easy to train. Already in 2014, he plans to replace 300,000 workers on Foxxcon iPhone assembly lines. If the experiment is successful, the bill will go into the millions. After all, the robot has one absolute trump card. It takes 16 years to put a person on the conveyor, and robots can get off the conveyor at least every minute. Today there are 300 thousand of them - tomorrow 300 million. Who knows, maybe it was your iPhone that was collected by Baxter.

The intelligent industrial robot Baxter is the first of a family of devices that will work in factories and perform simple production tasks that previously required the presence of humans. The difference between Baxter and a typical industrial robot is that it can be reprogrammed for a new action in just a few minutes. It is enough to indicate to him what movements need to be performed, and then, if necessary, adjust the program. “Baxter” does not work blindly: it recognizes objects around and, if it notices that something has gone wrong, it will immediately suspend work and call for help from a person. Baxter was developed by Rethink Robotics in 2012, and since then, has managed to become famous throughout the world.


Well, eight robots enough for today? Continued on Monday, and on weekends - come to get acquainted .