One of Belgium’s most renowned robot orchestras has acquired the use of several naked persons. The orchestra, sans naked persons, was written up a few years ago in a study: “The Man and Machine Robot Orchestra at Logos,” Laura Maes, Godfried-Willem Raes and Troy Rogers, Computer Music Journal, 35:4, pp. 28–48, Winter 2011. The authors, […]
Tag: robots
Swarms of Riderless Unicycles: research roundup
If you thought that the words ‘Unicycle’ and ‘Swarm’ are rarely found in close proximity to each other, you would be mistaken. In fact, the last few years have seen a great deal of academic effort directed specifically at the possibilities offered by a ‘Swarms of Unicycles’. Here are some recent examples from the many […]
Robots speech – Japanese pneumatic style
There are now several well-established ways to create artificial voices – some take a purely electronic approach, while others, like Professor Hideyuki Sawada at Kagawa University, Japan, have explored electro-mechanical methods. The video above shows how pneumatically-driven artificial lips, tongues, voicebox and nasal resonating cavities might simulate speech. Unfortunately, the mpeg videos linked-to via the […]
Abusing robots – current positions [part 4 of 4]
Given that various groups of academic researchers (and others) are already investigating the torture of robots, and that these procedures raise ethical questions [See previous posts on this topic.] We now turn to the question of how robots might express the levels of ‘pain’ to which they are exposed. Clearly they must be able to […]