omnispace

Rong Cheng

A group of Chinese scientists completed their work last week on a new robot named Miss Rong Cheng. The robot's designers say she is equipped with cutting-edge technology in human-to-robot interaction and responds to human voices. The robot is designed to look like a woman and it is programmed to speak Mandarin as well as a Sichuan dialect because she will be sent to the Sichuan Science Museum in Chengdu to act as a receptionist and tour guide. "Our institute has been making great efforts in developing voice recognition system for many years ... Meanwhile, the voice recognition function can make the communication between humans and robots more natural and personal, which highlights the progress we have achieved in making our robots more human-like", Yue Hongqiang, the robot's designer, said.

Qrio

In January 06, on the same day as it announced its discontinuation of AIBO and other products, Sony announced that it would stop development of QRIO. Before it was cancelled, QRIO was reported to be going through numerous development, testing and scalability phases, with the intent of becoming commercially available within three or four years. QRIO is capable of voice and face recognition, making it able to remember people as well as their likes and dislikes. A video on QRIO's website shows it speaking with several children. QRIO can run at 23cm/second, and is credited in Guinness World Records as being the first (and fastest) bipedal robot capable of running (which it defines as moving while both legs are off the ground at the same time).

Neuroengineering

EEG Pattern Recognition
This project aims to improve performance of NASA missions by developing brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies for augmented human-system interaction. BCI technologies will add completely new modes of interaction, which operate in parallel with keyboards, speech, or other manual controls, thereby increasing the bandwidth of human-system interaction. The research will extend recent feasibility demonstrations of electromyographic (EMG) methods for neurocontrol to the domain of electroencephalographic (EEG) methods of neurocontrol. These methods will bypass muscle activity and draw control signals directly from the human brain. BCI technologies will provide powerful and intuitive modes of interaction with 2-D and 3-D data, particularly for visualization and searching in complex data structures, such as geographical maps, satellite images, and terrain databases.

EMG Pattern Recognition
Electromyogram (EMG) signals are representative of the electrical energy present during muscle activation. These signals are may be sensed non-invasively by placing sensors on the skin which form a low impedance electrical connection with the tissue. These sensors can be either wet or dry, where the wet sensors use a conductive gel between the electrode and skin. We have developed pattern recognition software which can recognize EMG signals resulting from specific hand gestures. Examples of these gestures include pretending to move a joystick and pretending to type. We are thus able to "type" and use joysticks without having the mechanical joystick and keyboard devices physically present. Our future work includes developing improved electrodes, and further research and development into algorithms intrinsic to adaptive time-series analysis.

Robodock

The 9th Robodock Festival will be at the NDSM-Wharf in Amsterdam-Noord from 20-23th Sep 06. The theme of this festival edition is alchemy. This will be the leading thread within the program and a source of inspiration for the participating artists. Robodock is a unique international festival with a main core of technology, spectacle theatre, multi-media and industrial installations. In cooperation with artists, technology students and theatre makers the festival is styled by re-using scrap and other industrial left-overs.

Roy Ascott

Since the 1960s, UK educator, artist and theoretician Roy Ascott has been one of Europe's most active and outspoken practitioners of interactive computer art. Ten years before the personal computer came into existence, Ascott saw that interactivity in computer-based forms of expression would be an emerging issue in the arts. Intrigued by the possibilities, he built a theoretical framework for approaching interactive artworks, which brought together certain characteristics of the avant-garde (Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art, in particular), with the science of cybernetics championed by Norbert Wiener. Ascott's thesis on the cybernetic vision in the arts, "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision" from 1966, begins with the premise that interactive art must free itself from the modernist ideal of the "perfect object." Like John Cage, he proposes that the artwork be responsive to the viewer, rather than fixed and static. But Ascott takes Cage's premise into the realm of computer-based art, suggesting that the "spirit of cybernetics" offers the most effective means for achieving a two-way exchange between the artwork and its audience. roy ascott

Nam June Paik

In the 1960s, Nam June Paik embraced the medium of television, and became the founding father of video art. His long and prolific relationship with electronic media began notably with the cellist Charlotte Moorman, in controversial performance works such as Opera Sextronique from 1967. Paik's oeuvre later included television sculpture, satellite art, robotic devices, and giant video walls with synthesized imagery pulsating from stacks of cathode-ray tubes. Paik suggests that art should embrace the technologies of the information society. Paik presents himself as artist-shaman, synthesizing art and technology in an effort to exorcise the demons of a mass-consumer, technology obsessed society. Paik uses rejected media artifacts in his work, such as vintage television sets. His video works, with their liberal doses of "cybernated shock and catharsis," are poignantly cynical pieces that comment on an American techno-culture dominated by starry-eyed optimists. nam june paik

Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener defined "cybernetics" as the science of transmitting messages between man and machine, or from machine to machine. The term cybernetics has its roots in the Greek word for "steersman" or "governor," and Wiener's use of it suggests how people interact with machines through a controlling device, such as a steering mechanism. Wiener's remarkable insight, which is the premise behind all human-computer interactivity and interface design, is that human communication should be a model for human-machine and machine-to-machine interactions. Wiener claims that the quality of man-machine communication influences man's inner well-being. His theory of cybernetics was meant to improve the quality of our existence in a technological society, where people are increasingly reliant on machines, and where interactions with machines are the norm. The design of machines, and their ability to respond effectively to us, has a direct impact on the social condition. nobert wiener

All is full of love

Bjork and Chris Cunningham experiment with robotic love. One of pop's rarest moments - and not the easiet subject to swallow either! bjork