On this episode of TechStuff, host Jonathan Strickland talks about animatronics, which are robots intended to interact as realistically as possible with people. Unsurprisingly, the imagineers working for Disney theme parks are behind some of the most innovative developments with animatronics: Some of the first animatronics ever were birds at a tiki restaurant at Disneyland. Back then, these animatronics operated through a series of pneumatic valves that opened and closed the birds’ beaks in concert with a soundtrack, so the birds looked like they were singing or chirping. Now, the technology has come so far that imagineers are working on robots that can make eye contact with guests and respond more realistically to them. It’s pretty cool, but can also be a little unsettling, Jonathan says, presenting the engineers with a series of challenges.
When a human being makes eye contact with something, it’s due to a variety of factors: We notice something, either through sound or movement, and we turn our attention to the thing and determine if it’s really important to us. So if someone calls our name, we look at them for longer than if a car horn makes us glance up quickly. Then there’s our eyes themselves: Even as we gaze at something, our eyes aren’t static; they dart around and gather other visual information with movements called “saccades.” And, of course, there’s blinking, which is very important in an animatronic: As Jonathan points out, there’s very little as unsettling as a robot that looks at us and then continues to stare without blinking. To a human, that can feel predatory – pretty much the opposite of what Disney imagineers are going for.
So the robots need some kind of camera and face recognition technology, in order to “see” our faces. These cameras also need to “see” in 3D, so there’s a depth to the robot’s vision; it can tell when something is close up or far away. The “attention engine” gives everything within the robot’s field of vision a “curiosity score.” If something falls below the threshold of the curiosity score, the robot will simply glance at it, then look away. But if it’s above the threshold, the robot will then engage with it through a library of pre-programmed behaviors. Of course, we’re talking about a theme park, where kids might jump up and down in front of a robot over and over again to make it talk. To solve that problem, imagineers programmed “familiarity” in, as well as a short-term memory called “guest house.” These innovations are paving the way for the most realistic animatronics we’ve ever seen before. Listen to this episode for more about how these amazing animatronics work, and what it means for the future of robotics, on TechStuff.
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