Kill it with fire!

THE HORROR

According to the PDF, the robot is supposed to model a 1 year old baby and the purpose is to conduct research on how a baby’s brain develops. Diego-san’s face has about 20 moving parts so that it can communicate with facial expression without being able to talk. It is 130cm tall, weighs 30kg and can stand up from a chair on its own. It can hold a water bottle with its hand. It has a high resolution camera and 6 axis acceleration sensor built in to detect movement. Unfortunately it doesn’t say why the head has to be so big. Female researchers contributed to the design and coordination – thus the photo of woman hugging Diego-san. Hope this helps!

Thanks for the extra info, Norri. But I still agree with Robotbling. This thing has to be destroyed…

Dump it in a lava flow PLEASE !!

A baseball bat certainly wouldn’t miss it’s mark. XP

Take off and nuke it from orbit… It’s the only way to be sure.

I have to also agree with Robotbling. That scary thing is just so wrong. I didn’t know the Uncanny Valley could get that deep! :)

The Baby Robot cannot be destroyed by any craft that we here possess. The Baby Robot was made in the fires of Mount Doom. Only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm from whence it came.

KILL IT, LOBOTOMIZE THE SCIENTISTS WHO MADE IT!!!

The thing is an abomination in the eyes of god!

there are already too damn many human babies, last thing needed is robot babies

WATCH OUTCHUCKIES BACKKILL IT NOW

On the next episode of Big Baby….

I think we should wait for him in the ally and jump on him and kick his ass until he’s dead..I don’t think the cops will arrest us for that,will they?
if we killed that robot..it’s not a murder case,right?

I think we should leave them
the freedom to research, if this is still à democratic world. They are not hurting anybody and maybe Their researches will lead to something good. I feel so sad when I read “destroy it”. there is just à sort of human beings that destroy what they don’t like or understand, and noone to be proud of.

It’s 3am, you’re about to lock up the lab when a high pitched servo whine catches your ear.

Then the babynator runs out the shadows and tries to *feed*.

I am Javier Movellan, the guy in the picture with Diego San and the leader of Project One at the University of California San Diego. What you see in the picture was the finished body of Diego San and the first prototype of the face. The body is an amazing piece of engineering that will challenge the limits of control theory and will help us move towards a better understanding of biological motion.

The face on he other was an obvious mistake and we are working on a new design. But remember the face is just a silicon mask that can be easily changed. It is unfortunate that the pictures of the old face were made public. I actually thought that the pictures were going to be for an internal leaflet and not to be made public. Then again that’s what robotic research is about. You make mistakes, learn from the experience and make your prototype better the next time.

Things are actually not that easy in terms of how to design the face as some of your comments lead to believe. A key aspect of Project One is to use robots to understand the development of motor control during the first year of life both. We are interested both in the development of interaction with the physical world (e.g., reaching, grasping) and interaction with the social world (e.g, pointing, smiling). Thus, facial expressions are very important for the project.

We are going back and forth as to whether the robot should have a face that looks like a human child, or whether it should have a face that looks more robot-like. Although the first pass may lead you to believe that the realistic human face is worse there are some very good face designers that do not agree.

Best

… by the way. I will try to involve this blog in the development of the face prototype and will try to gather your views and ideas before we construct it.

The truly scary thing is how quickly some people on this site have decided to kill something that frightens them.

The “kill” comments are for humor (I chuckled). When I saw the large head, I couldn’t help but think “Avatar baby!”. But seriously, the engineering behind this must be intense. I have no doubt this kind of research will be viewed in future history lessons as having led to the android lifeforms that will be so prevalent then. Kudos to you and your team Javier.

perhaps you could emphasize the facial variables with exaggerated ‘cute’ features so that the ‘baby’ vibe is still created without the scary uncanny valley effect of an imperfect, over-sized replica?
previous studies seem to indicate that people can become attached to, and interact with a ’surrogate’ baby with an artificially ‘cute’ face, so you may not need the literal baby form to create a baby interaction and range of expressions.

right now, the researchers are more likely to interact with the robot as though it were a possessed baby with gigantism, rather than an accurate model…

Do you have any references to the ’surrogate’ baby studies?

Thanks

Wow Javier, I just stumbled on this while reading a tech blog. Does Diego-San have pneumatic actuators?

kill it ……………

Hi Josh.

Yes all the actuators (except for the facial actuators) are pneumatic: standard cylinders and air muscles. The advantage of pneumatic actuators is that you don’t need gears and they are backdrivable. This produces motion that is very compliant and life-like. This also creates a nightmare for classic control theory approaches. You can’t isolate the effect of each of the 88 actuators. They need to be controlled all at once since the entire body is coupled. Horrible from a control theory point of view but that’s the way the human body was designed and babies do not seem to have a problem with it. This robot is certainly going to challenge us and take us to new territories in the understanding of the development of sensory motor intelligence from a computational point of view.

Then on top of this is the whole issue with the social interaction. We need for the robot to be able to communicate with people in a manner not unlike the way human infants communicate with caregivers. The current face design, which we did not intend to be public, is obviously generating very strong negative reactions. We are already working on the second face design. Everybody has strong opinions about why the current version generates such negative reactions: face too large, robot babies are freaky, skin texture is wrong, mixing mechanical body with biological face is scary, giganto-babies are scary … For just about every theory examples can be given that contradict the theories. The truth is nobody really knows. It is a trial an error process.

Cool. It’s a new robotic chucky!
Actually though, I think it’s an incredible project. Keep up the amazing work!

OH, and by the way, I don’t see a problem with the face/head. Since (one of) the goal(s) is communication via facial expressions, then this is what is required to accomplish the goal(s), correct? Any kind of baby face you put on the bot is going to get someone riled up a bit so there’s no point in trying to make everyone happy since it’s not possible to do so (right?). It appears to me that everything you’re doing is right where you’re supposed to be, creepy baby head or not. This is research, not movie making.

Why does that baby look and remind me of Gary Coleman?

I’m sorry Tim Tebow, but ABORT!!!

WOW thats Freaky, robot babies are a nono its just plain creepy, dang japanese always come up with Weird crap

Obviously, this is serious, interesting research. More power to the researchers.
But I laughed till I cried over the OTT ‘nuke it’ remarks. Like a bunch of schoolkids egging each other on, they just got more ridiculous as time went on. Bone-crusher’s comment did for me, I’m sorry to say.
Keep it up Javier, and don’t take the comments seriously.

Please change the head, at least make it more adorable.

Fisher Price Dinosaur

bueno, por lo que he leido, aca tienen comentarios duros a un “proyecto científico” la misma palabra lo dice, cuando uno trabaja en algo, nada a primera hora va a salir perfecto, más bien es un gran avance lo que ha hecho el Doctor Movellan, y mas aun de seguir mejorando el prototipo, es obvio que puede causar terror con la cara del bebe (para algunos) pero como mencionó anteiormente Movellan, estas fotos han sido publicadas sin autorización, con la intención de desprestigiar a Movellan, pero como bien sabemos muchos, es facil opinar a simple vista sin saber bien la historia.