Where Nightmares Come True
It’s alive! Well, not really, but you’ll do a double take with this unintentionally spooky humanoid robot from Disney Research.
Just in time for Halloween, the crew from Disney Research has given us a one way ticket to the uncanny valley with their humanoid robot bust that might just make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Drawing (no pun intended) on insights from character animation, they seek to create the illusion of life by simulating realistic motions and responses to external stimuli.
Gaze is known to be important in social interactions, both for communication as well as in shaping perceptions. Thus, the team chose to focus on this particular social cue in their goal to create the illusion of life.
The robot is a Walt Disney Imagineering Audio-Animatronics bust, making use of nine degrees of freedom between the neck, eyes, eyelids, and eyebrows. A camera has been fitted to the robot for perception of nearby people. The camera data is fed into an attention engine that generates a “curiosity score” that indicates the importance to the robot of each person in view, as well as determining certain actions they may be taking, such as waving.
Using input from the attention engine, the robot will focus its gaze on nearby individuals. To further the appearance of life, subtle movements are made to simulate blinking and breathing. Saccades — rapid eye movements between points of interest — complete the effect. The robot is also trained to focus its attention in realistic ways. For example, if the robot has directed its gaze on the eyes of a nearby person, it may quickly shift its gaze in the direction of a loud noise — say a little girl shrieking with excitement at seeing a character from the movie Frozen. Presumably, the final step in bringing the robot to life is waiting for a bolt of lightning to electrify the lifeless torso — although this was not specifically mentioned in the paper.
While this robot provides realistic interaction experiences at close range, the team notes that the illusion is broken after a relatively short time and further work is needed to maintain believability for longer engagements. Personally, I do not think this is a problem. The unnerving appearance of the robot should naturally keep interaction times to a minimum before people flee for the safety of It's a Small World.