The robot that walks and talks like Gollum

 

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Posted on 5 Mar 2008 at 08:11

The artificial intelligence (AI) technology which once told the Orcs which humans to hit in the Lord of the Rings is now finding its way into a myriad of other applications, and could even be bringing the next generation of robotics into our living rooms.

The AI technology was initially created to animate large battle scenes, giving each character a distinct personality so that the animator need only click a button and watch the fight erupt.

However, according to its creators, Massive, the AI is now able to mimic a range of human emotions, and has been developed to model everything from panic simulations of people in a burning building to architectural layouts determining how easily groups navigate a floor plan.

Massive has also teamed up with Hanson Robotics to create a robot called Zeno (pictured), which using an amalgamation of Massive's AI operating system and Hanson's own technology will be capable of recognition, response and emotional simulation when fully developed in 2010.

Recognition and response

The recognition comes courtesy of facial recognition technology and a camera in the eye socket. The creators say that when the software is complete, Zeno will be able to recognise people and call them by name. It will ask the name of people it hasn't met before and store that information with the facial recognition data for future encounters.

Because the AI software powering Zeno was built to mimic human expressions in animated characters, the robot, when completed, will also be capable of more natural motions, including smiling and walking - potentially eliminating those jerky actions so often associated with robots in science fiction.

"The genesis of the idea was to author an AI that could drive the behaviours, first of a virtual character that could act on their own behalf, and then drive the servos of something like Zeno - that was how it was conceived even at the beginning," says Diane Holland, chief executive officer of Massive.

"The same technology that drove Gollum's movement is now driving Zeno's movement. The benefits are you get a very smooth, very natural action because the instructions you're using are from feature film quality animation. We're on the way to seeing some amazing stuff, and we're really just dipping our toe in the water."

Hanson's creators say that the nature of Zeno's behaviour is currently limited only by the behavioural definitions entered into the AI operating system and the physical processing power required. The latter problem it intends to solve by linking the robot through an inbuilt Wi-Fi connection to a central processing centre at its headquarters.

The future?

Massive speaks ebulliently about its technology being able to one day power medical robots which patrol wards and dispense medicines in countries where nurses are in short supply, or AI stockbrokers making predictions on Wall Street.

The timing of such endeavours remains vague, however. Massive says talks are already under way with a number of partners concerning new applications, but that it is a couple of years away from announcements and product demonstrations.

Intriguingly though, Holland claims the AI operating system is already able to fulfil the tasks under discussion, and would simply require specific data associated with the task to get going.

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Author: Stuart Turton in Hannover