Humanoid learns to point, bow

A full-size humanoid robot that can communicate with natural human gestures and demonstrate some AI chops has been developed by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

Researchers at the institute's Spoken Language Communication Group say it is the first robot in the world with nonverbal communication skills and multipurpose, high-level functions. The bipedal machine, which stands 155 cm (5 feet) tall, uses its artificial vision system to recognize objects in 3D and learn human gestures such as pointing and bowing, as well as their meaning when performed by others.

The scientists compare this to the way a child learns to communicate. No word yet on what the tin man calls itself.

NICT says it hopes the bot, which looks like an early Asimo prototype, will be used as an everyday caregiver for elderly people in the future as well as a helper robot in natural disasters.

Via Nikkei Net, NICT

Dancing bot rocks out in Wired vid

With Tokyo in an intense heat wave, there's nothing like a dancing robot to lift one's spirits from the humid doldrums. This great video from Wired and my roboticist pal Marek Michalowski features the "creature-like" robot Keepon developed at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology's (NICT) Kyoto research center. Developer Hideki Kozima created Keepon as a simple social communication robot with reactive and emotive abilities. Michalowski programmed him. There's more info about Keepon here.

Keepon is also interesting in that he exhibits unpredictable behavior based on sensor input data. Michalowski explained his jig to me thus:

For Keepon, "tempo" is an abstract property that can be perceived in lots of different modalities: sound, vision, accelerometer movement...when he perceives periodic events, he figures out the tempo and synchronizes to that. But his dancing "style" is an emergent property of randomly changing dance "parameters" rather than a scripted set of movements.

Keepon seems right out of Sesame Street or the Muppet Show to me, but this video proves his street cred. I also noticed that it features famous spots in Tokyo such as Tokyo Big Sight, the Kaminarimon Gate of Sensoji Temple, Akihabara's Radio Center Building and Chuo-dori street, Shibuya crossing, and the east side of Shinjuku Station. The final sequence with dancing kit robots like Manoi was filmed at robot retailer and educator RT Corp., also in Akihabara. Wired took liberties with the Tokyo backgrounds, inserting its logo into the visual chaos of neon and concrete.

Super kawaii Keepon rocks. He'll be at the Wired NextFest in LA next month.