Another vid about robots (lovebots, if Chung’s correction near the end of the talk is conceded). I’ve seen this one before, but it’s been a demanding couple of weeks at school, and as far as I’m concerned there are few more effective coping mechanisms than watching videos about 100 cool toys designed and created by the amazing Caleb Chung (who, wtf, doesn’t have a Wiki page? Will attempt to rectify tonight).

Chung’s most famous creation is likely still the Furby (I remember getting one for Christmas one year alongside my cousins, and being creeped right the fuck out. Can’t imagine how I’d have felt receiving the prototype…) but he’s more recently come out with something way way cool - Pleo. Pleo is a young, robotic Camarasaurus who doesn’t grow but learns to progress through life stages. It receives information and moves in its environment using 40 sensors, 7 processors, and 14 motors. Pleo comes with a personality (Chung believes the toy will help users develop empathy, which is a beautiful thing for a toy to do) but is open source, so you can also create or download different personalities for Pleo. In other words, *so much awesome* in one toy - now in reborn version (hope the name’s not too indicative of PLEOrb’s personality…)! ee! <3

Making Adventures of Huckleberry Finn more politically correct. Kind of.

Check out the Kickstarter for Diani&Devine’s quest to replace all occurrences of the word “nigger” with “robot” in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

3/42.

Yup, TED tried to swing a fast one; a 42nd “robots” video has been added, once I was already 4.8% finished the goal. Fortunately, it was a great talk, and I’ve not only caught up to but exceeded the precedent: 7.1%. :)

I first heard of Cynthia Breazeal for her role in developing Leonardo, an adorable, social robot who can nonverbally communicate based on auditory cues from speakers and can not only recall facts, but who knows what facts based on facial recognition. Now, Leonardo (and Kismet) is part of a bigger picture: Breazeal founded the Personal Robots Group at MIT with human-robot interaction in mind. 

Breazeal ventures beyond making bad ass robots into the realm of human psychology, looking for ways to enhance communication technologies, health care (specifically the maintenance of health behaviours through anthropomorphic - though not human - reinforcement) and even play (as we become able to be part of, not bear witness to, the virtual realities we construct in what are now movies, video games, etc). I found this an inspiring talk and would super highly recommend it.

lmarobot