Interactive Cybernetics

REX 6 appeared at the Relational Bus Systems (RBS) booth for the Motor Coach 2007 show in New Orleans January 17-19. The show was used as an educational experience for the REX developers. By observing REX interaction with the show attendees, we will further enhance REX abilities. You can see the new video of REX 6 on the demos page.

To facilitate construction of new models, we purchased a Dimension 3D printer from Stratasys. All of REX 6 internal parts are drawn in SolidWorks and printed on the Dimension. This combination of hardware and software gives us the ability to reproduce parts quickly with better precision.

We have switched to the a new motion controller board. REX 6 now receives commands to all 46 servos at a blazing 115200kbs thanks to Yost Engineerings ServoCenter 3.1. This is a standout motion controller with high speed, multiple interface options (including midi, USB, and serial connections), and robust programming capability. We would like to thank Paul and his crew at Yost. You can see our joint advertisement run in the January issue of Servo Magazine here and December issue of Robot Magazine here.

REX 6 now uses very fast digital servos mixed with some slower analogs. These digital servos provide a visible boost to lip sync and eyelid blinks.

In addition to these many structural engineering changes, new controller boards, and digital servos, the REX 6 model incorporates the CMU Sphinx4 speech recognition software, the Cepstral speech generation software (including most elements of the W3C Speech Synthesis Markup Language specification), and the OpenCV vision software.

We are interested in talking to anyone else who is using any of these components in their models.

Our own programming language used to control the REX models has been updated to include a subset of the W3C VXML specification to make building scripted dialogs in VXML possible.

REX 6 appearance has gone through a complete makeover. REX looks radically different compared to the previous REX models. His facial features, skin coloring, skin texture, and hair have all been modified to produce a more visually accurate model.

You can now interact with REX. Meet REX on-line for an interactive experience using Windows Live Messenger 8.0. Starting February 3, 2007 interaction begins Saturdays at 3:00pm and lasts until 7:00pm eastern time. You must have a Broadband connection, Windows Live Messenger 8.0, a microphone, and speakers to interact with REX.

Website Launch
Friday, November 18, 2005
Interactive Cybernetics (finally) launches it's website. On November 18, 2005, we begin our on line journal of interactive robot development. Follow our progress as we continue to advance a technology we have named REX. Through this site we will share our successes and failures in trying to build an interactive humanoid robot that escapes the "Uncanny Valley".

Some sections about the specific technology involved in producing the REX models are still under construction, and will be published later, but we have included some demonstrations, which highlight the capabilities of the current REX model.

ROBONexus
Friday, November 18, 2005
We attended this years ROBONexus 2005 in San Jose California, a trade show that bills itself as the largest display of robotics technology in this country. Well... we have been back from the show for a few weeks now and have some comments.

ROBONexus identified itself as the place for robotics enthusiasts, professionals, and educators to view the latest in robotics technology. We were hoping to meet other developers who were building machines with similar or complementary technology to our own. We arrived with an excited anticipation of discovery. As we roamed through the layout of booths, the anticipation turned to disappointment. Why?

We found ROBONexus to be a mix of robotic technology without a primary focus. It was an eclectic gathering of adults, children, and products. A significant number of booths offered battling, wrestling, dancing, or maze-running robotic toys, aimed largely at the attending children, and they were successful at gathering and mesmerizing them. A full sized robotic giraffe with blinking lights drew a large crowd of both children and adults. NASA showed tiny robotic explorers crawling around a small rocky landscape to draw attention to it's Robonaut project.

I-Robot, with their robotic vacuums, had the largest and most prominent booth specifically targeting adults.

One booth displayed impressive pinhole cameras, but was only interested in selling them by the thousands to system integrators.

Watching Robbie the Robot's neon tube mouth blink while playing some prerecorded words was as close as we came to seeing speech generation in sync with lip movement.

The robotic seal pup that responded to touch probably came the closest to what we expected in terms of interaction, although even that was far from what we wanted to see.

We realize that shows of this type are really a place for buyers to meet sellers, and that they tend to display what can be bought now or in the near future. What we are working on may not produce a salable product in the near future, but we were considering buying a small booth to show it anyway, and we went to see if there would be others like us.

All in all, we don't think that we would go to next year's show, unless we want to get some ideas for our Christmas toy shopping.