What it is
Engineers based in University of Western Sydney have designed a new robot that can interact with people and even choose to answer philosophical questions, or not.

The robot, named Stelarc, is an artistic robot installation that can respond to questions and can even furrow it’s brow when it’s stumped. According to some who have seen the interactive robot at a recent conference at the University of Technology Sydney, it can show preference for one person over another, although engineers say that it is most likely due to how close a person is standing to its eye ball tracking mechanism. Low light for instance, or locality to a microphone may make it easier for the robot to pick up on stimulus in its environment.

Technical stuff
Essentially, the robot is a 3D LCD monitor mounted at the end of a very industrial looking  arm.  Aided with an array of speakers, cameras and microphones, the robot utilizes robot technologies, sensors, and computer engineering to communicate with people in it’s environment. The robot can recognize faces and respond to questions that are typed into the robot’s computer.

Animation articulation
Stelarc uses a text-to-AV system to synthesize speech facial animations. The robot receives text data and utilizes a database of phonetics and facial expression to generate speech and corresponding face motion as an output.

Let’s talk Software
In order to create the humanistic Stelarc head, Australian engineers use several types of software. Stelarc uses Face Robot, a 3D face animation software, which is a soft tissue model to create natural looking facial expressions. Face Robot is able to include emotional Reponses as well as speech actions in its reactions. Z-brush is a sculpting, texturizing, and painting tool software used in conjunction with Face Robot that creates a high resolution model of a human head.

Why Stelarc at all
The project has two goals, the first is to create a robot that can improve interaction between humans and machines, more specifically that these robots may one day be able to improve the lives of elderly persons and autistic kids. Dr. Damith Herath, a research engineer on the project says, "It's possible that this robot will evolve into, for example, an intelligent wheelchair that can guide elderly people as they go about their day to day business.” The second goal of the project is to provide a “plug and play platform” to test new interactive software technologies as they are designed.

Stelarc the robot
The robot, called Stelarc, is an artistic and scientific robot experiment named after an Australian performance artist of the same name. The robot’s face and deep voice have been modeled after Stelarc in order to give the robot a warm, humanistic quality.

Stelarc the Performance Artist
Stelarc the performance artist has made a career exploring body and machinery. Most of his art has some human-machine interaction. Check out Stelarc’s website to see his other experiments including when he embarked on a journey under the knife to grow an ear on his forearm.