Strandbeests : Kinetic Sculptures by Theo Jansen

Posted on by

Last update : August 9, 2013

Strandbeests

Strandbeest “Animaris Ordis Parvus” Assembly Kit

Theo Jansen, born 14 March 1948, is a Dutch artist and kinetic sculptor. Since 1990 he builds large works, called strandbeests, which resemble skeletons of animals, that are able to walk using wind power on the beaches of the Netherlands. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new creatures. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

Some beach animals  have a stomach consisting of recycled plastic bottles containing air, that can be pumped up to a high pressure by the wind.  Others are able to detect once they have entered water and walk away from it, and one species will even anchor itself to the earth if it senses a storm approaching.

The artworks of Theo Jansen have been presented on numerous websites, TV shows, videos, books, conferences and exhibitions. The movie Strandbeesten, directed by Alexander Schlichter (2008), was presented at the Bio:Fiction festival in 2011.

An assembly kit of a miniature version of the strandbeests Animaris Ordis Parvus is available at the website of the artist. It is produced by Gakken Education Publishing Co. Ltd. Japan.  After assembling, the mini strandbeest walks on the wind, by hand or by blowing against the propeller. Another strandbeest, the mini Rhinocerus, has been published by the same company in Japan.

MMDAgent toolkit

Posted on by

Last update : August 9, 2013

MMDAgent

MMDAgent

MMDAgent is a toolkit for building voice interaction systems. The toolkit is released for contributing to the popularization of speech technology. Users can design users own dialog scenario, 3D agents, and voices. This software is released under the New and Simplified BSD license. Version 1.3.1 was released on December 25, 2012, and is available at the SourceForge website. The toolkit was created by the Department of Computer Science at the Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan. The current members of the project team are Keiichi Tokuda, Akinobu Lee and Keiichiro Oura.

MMDAgent  employs MikuMikuDance (MDD) as a foundation for its 3D rendering system, as well as allowing users to maintain a lively conversation with their 3D companion. Hatsune Miku is one of the many models that can be used to hold a conversation with.

MMDAgent speech recognition

The speech recognition module of MMDAgent is based on Julius, the open-source large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition engine. New words to be recognized to MMDAgent can be added by making a user dictionary.

An MMDAgent WordPress Blog with news about the project was launched in August 2012.

Miku Miku Dance (MMD)

Posted on by

MikuMikuDance (MMD) is a freeware animation program that lets users animate and create 3D animation movies for Vocaloid models. MikuMikuDance was programmed by Yu Higuchi and has gone through significant upgrades since its creation. Its production was made as part of the Vocaloid Promotion Video Project (VPVP).

The software allows users to import 3D models into a virtual space that can be moved and animated accordingly. The following features are available :

  • import of .wav files to create music videos
  • import and export of motion data
  • integrated physics engine
  • use of Microsoft’s Kinect
  • map shadowing

Miku Miku Dance screen snap

The software comes with a number of 3D models based on the mascots of Crypton Future Media Vocaloids. The default models Miku, Meiko, Kaito, Kagamine Rin/Len, Akita Neru and Haku Yowane were created by Animasa, the default Sakine Meiko model was created by Kio. All content, including the 3D models, is distributed freely by the users and most of its additional content is produced by fans using 3D modeling software. As recognition and popularity of Vocaloids grew, the japanese video hosting platform Nico Nico Douga became a place for collaborate content creation.

The first version of Miku Miku Dance was released on February, 24, 2008.  An english version was released one month later. On May 26, 2011, Yu Higuchi announced he would retire from developing MMD. The last stable release of the program is version 7.30.

Additional useful informations about Miku Miku Dance are available at the following links :

Vocaloids

Posted on by

Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application, with its signal processing part (concatenative synthesis) developed through a joint research project between the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain and Japan’s Yamaha Corporation, who developed the software into a commercial product. Vocaloid enables users to synthesize singing by typing in lyrics and melody. The main parts of the Vocaloid  system are the Score Editor, the Singer Library and the Synthesis Engine. The project started in 2000, the first commercial Vocaloid version was presented by Yamaha at the Musikmesse in Germany in 2003 and the Vocaloid version 3 was launched in October 2011.

Each Vocaloid is sold as “a singer in a box” designed to act as a replacement for an actual singer. Today seven studios are involved with the production and distribution of Vocaloids, among them are three studios creating english Vocaloids, the other four are solely creating Japanese Vocaloids.

  • Zero-G (english virtual vocalists) : Zero-G Limited was founded in 1990, trading under the name Time+Space, by Ed Stratton and Julie Stratton.  Zero-G  rapidly became the largest distributor of soundware in the UK and one of the most critically acclaimed sound developers in the world.
  • Power-X (english virtual vocalists) : PowerFX is a small recording company, based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company has been producing music samples, loops and sound effects since 1995.
  • Crypton Future Music (japanese and english virtual vocalists) : Crypton, is a media company based in Sapporo, Japan, created in 1995. It develops, imports, and sells products for music, such as sound generator software, sampling CDs and DVDs, sound effect and background music libraries.
  • Internet Co. Ltd. (japanese virtual vocalists) : Internet Co.  is a software company based in Osaka, Japan. It is best known for the music sequencer Singer Song Writer and Niconico Movie Maker for the video sharing website Nico Nico Douga.
  • AH Software (japanese virtual vocalists) : AH-Software is the software brand of AHS Co., Ltd., an importer of digital audio workstations and encoders in Tokyo, Japan. It is also known as the developer of Voiceroid, a speech synthesizer application only available in the Japanese language.
  • Bplats (japanese virtual vocalists) : Bplats, Inc. is an application service provider (ASP) based in Tokyo, Japan. The company offers Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions, such as the Vocaloid series VY1 and a Vocaloid online shop.
  • Ki/oon Records (japanese virtual vocalists) : Ki/oon Records is a Japanese record label, a subsidiary of Sony Music Japan.

Hatsune

Kagamine

Leon

Sonika

Big AL

Nekomura

A complete list of the Vocaloid products is available at the Wiki website.  The marketing of  the Vocaloids is done by the studios.

Just like any music synthesizer, the software is treated as a musical instrument and the vocals as sound, belonging to the software user. The mascots for the software can be used to create vocals for commercial or non-commercial use as long as the vocals do not offend public policy. On the other hand, copyrights to the mascot image and name belong to their respective studios and can not be usedd without the consent of the studio who owns them.

There are a number of derivative products, for example Vocaloid-Flex, Vocal Listener, Miku Miku Dance, Project Diva and MMDAgent. An online Vocaloid service (NetVocaloid)  in English and Japanese is available at the Y2 Project website.

The following virtual vocalists are the most famous :

A number of figurines and plush dolls were released for some of these singers, some have their own Twitter, Facebook and MySpace accounts.

In Japan, Vocaloids have a great cultural impact and lead to a lot of legal implications. Vocaloid music is available on CD’s, iTunes, AmazonMP3 etc. Open air concerts with virtual vocalists have been organized recently with great success :

  • 1st live concert (Animelo Summer Live) : August 22, 2009, Saitama Super Arena, Saitama, Japan
  • 2nd live concert (Mikufes 09) : August 31, 2009,
  • 1st overseas concert (Anime Festival Asia) : November 21, 2009, Singapore
  • 3rd live concert (Miku no Hi Kanshasai 39’s Giving Day) : March 09, 2010, Odaibo, Tokio, Japan
  • 1st american live concert : September 18, 2010, San Francisco, USA
  • Vocarock Festival : January 11, 2011
  • Vocaloid Festa : February 12, 2011
  • 4th live concert : March, 9, 2011, Tokio, Japan
  • 2nd american live concert : October 11, 2010, Viz Cinema, San Francisco, USA; screening in the New York Anime Festival
  • 3rd american live concert (Mikunopolis) : July 2, 2010, Nokia Theater, Anime Expo, Los Angeles, USA

During the concerts, 3D animations of the Vocaloid mascots are projected on a transparent screen giving an effect of  a pseudo-hologram. Videos of different Vocaloid concerts are available at the following Youtube playlist.

A similar software as Vocaloids, developped by Ameya/Ayame, is called UTAU and has been released as freeware. Cracked copies of Vocaloids are called Pocaloids.

AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language)

Posted on by

Last update : July 17, 2013

AIML virtual assistant

Virtual Assistant Denise by Guile 3D Studio

AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) is an XML-compliant language that’s easy to learn, and makes it possible to customize an artificial intelligence chat robot or creating one from scratch within minutes. AIML is free open-source software provided by the ALICE A.I. Foundation, a non-profit research and training organization. ALICE stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity, an award-winning free natural language artificial intelligence chat robot. The AIML 2.0 draft specification was released on January 16, 2013.

A AIML beginners guide is available at the website of the ALICE  A.I. Foundation.

There are various AIML sets available, among them the free Annotated ALICE AIML set, a revised release of the scripts comprising the award winning chat robot ALICE. The ALICE A. I. Foundation is also offering the commercial version Superbot 2.1 (999 US$) that helps you to create a totally unique custom bot personality for your web site or application.

The other free softwares available are implementations of the ALICE chatbot engine in different computer languages, tools and knowledge bases. Documentation, specifications, tutorials and showcases are available at the alicebot.org website. Chatting with an original ALICEBOT is possible in the Hall of Fame of Digital Art at Leslie’s Artgallery.

Another more advanced implementation of an AIML robot is Denise, a virtual assistant software created by Guile 3D Studio.

An outstanding tool to program a robot brain in AIML is the free GaitoBot AIML editor provided by the german company Springwald Software.

LOVOTICS = Love + Robotics

Posted on by

Last update : May 18, 2013

Lovotics

The Human and robot may fall in love one day!  That was the goal of Hooman Samani when he was an AI (Artficial Intelligence) researcher at the Keio-NUS CUTE Center, which is a collaborative Social Robots Lab between National University of Singapore and Keio University of Japan. In 2013, Dr. Hooman Samani is Director of the AIART Lab (Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Technology Laboratory) and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, National Taipei University, Taiwan. He is the founder of Lovotics research and developed several applications in the field of human-to-robot relationship.

Lovotics includes Artificial Endocrine System, Probabilistic Love Assembly and Affective State Transition modules. They are based on physiology of love, psychology of love and emotional models respectively. Artificial Endocrine System produces artificial hormones such as Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphin, imitating the human endocrine system.

Affective State Transition controls various affective parameters of love, for example facial expressions, voice, gesture. They allow Lovotics robot to reason about other person’s emotions and state of mind.

Lovotics is a multidisciplinary research field utilizing fundamentals concepts from robotics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, psychology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, social science, computer science and engineering. Kissenger, Mini-Surrogate and XOXO are applications of Lovotics.

Verbots

Posted on by

Last update : August 6, 2013

Verbot 5

Verbots (Verbally Enchanted Software Robots)  is a popular chatterbot program and Artificial Intelligence Software Development Kit (SDK) for the Windows platform and for the web, created by Dr. Michael Mauldin and Peter Plantec.

Some milestones of the history of verbots are presented hereafter :

  • 1989 : TinyMUD Gloria
  • 1990 : TinyMUD Julia
  • 1991 : participation of Julia in the first Loebner Prize contest
  • 1994 : chatterbot Julia
  • 1997 : creation of Virtual Personalities, Inc.
  • 2000 : production release of the virtual human interface Sylvie
  • 2004 : release of the Verbot 4 version
  • 2006 : start of Verbots Online
  • 2010 : relase of the Verbot 5 version

Version 4 of verbots was based on MS Agent which has been discontinued by Microsoft in Windows 7.  A properties viewer of MS agents has been created by AbhiSoft Technologies. A related scripting software has been developed by the same company who also provides a file repository for MS Agents.

Version 5 of verbots uses characters made up of 22 SAPI5 viseme groups and animations. The Conversive Character Studio Application allows you to easily create your own talking characters that are compatible with Verbots and VerbotsOnline using high-quality SAPI 5 tts voices. Conversive characters are defined in a .css file in xml format. Sample visemes are available at the verbots wiki website. Animations are a collection of frames which are displayed on the screen in sequence.

The different verbots file types are :

  • ckb : Compiled KnowledgeBase
  • csv : Comma Separated Values
  • vkb : Verbot KnowledgeBase
  • vrp : Verbot Replacement Profile
  • vsn : Verbot Synonyms

The templates to create the Verbots brain are the following :

  • My answers
  • My Knowledge Bases
  • My Design
  • Install

In the Online version you can browse the chat logs, manage your account and list your bot in the online directory. Several tags are available to commande the Verbot. A Verbot editor allows to create and edit the different templates. KnowledgeBases are created from a collection of Rules. Rules contain Inputs and Outputs. Rules can be Primary Rules, Child Rules or Virtual Child Rules. Conditionals, variables and regular expressions are further means to set up a personality. Special inputs allow to start and stop animations, embedded C# code modules allows to execute programs, schedue tags allow to trigger time events, commands are used to open web adresses or to run applications.

The Teaching.vkb KnowledgeBase allows new rules to be dynamically added while chatting.

ChatVerbots for IRC and AIM are available as beta versions.

The following tutorials about Verbots are available :

  • Creating personalities
  • Creating your first rule
  • Creating child rules
  • Knowledge Base templates and csv files

Communities discussing about verbots are listed below :

Concerning  AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language maintained by the Alice Foundation ), verbots don’t comply to this standard. Verbots KB (Knowledge Base) and AIML both are XML based, but the format is different, the working of engine is different, the usability is different.

A free tool to convert AIML files to Verbots KB files is available at the Verbots website.

The Alice Foundation is more active, more dynamic and more professional, compared to the Verbots Community, whereas the Verbots Technology offers some outstanding features.

The Verbots Online Service was closing down at the end of August 2012. Free webhosting for AIML is still available  : Pandorabots for AIML. To fully customize your Bot and to give him a Voice (TTS), a paid subscription is required. SitePal.

Microsoft Tellme

Posted on by

Microsoft Tellme simplifies everyday tasks with the natural power of your voice. You can talk to your PC, tablet, phone, TV or car.

The results of the Microsoft Tellme technologies “Say it. Get it” are speech recognition and synthesis capabilities in products ranging from Xbox Kinect for fun to Microsoft Tellme IVR for customer care to Windows Phone 7 for life and work.

In Windows 7 you can use voice recognition to control your computer and to dictate and edit text. A guide how to set up your computer for this task is available at the microsoft website.

The provided technologies for business applications are Microsoft Tellme IVR and embedded speach features in Office, Lync and Exchange . Different platforms are available : cloud, server, desktop, phone.

To extend the built-in speech recognition functionality included in Windows on desktop, you can use Windows Speech Recognition Macros or, for more advanced uses, the Microsoft Speech API (SAPI).

SAPI has been an integral component of all Microsoft Windows versions since Windows 98. Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 include SAPI version 5.1. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 include SAPI version 5.3, while Windows 7 includes SAPI version 5.4. Code written for SAPI 5.3 (Vista) will run on SAPI 5.4 (Windows 7) without recompiling.

People researching on Artificial Consciousness

Posted on by

Based mainly on the outstanding informations at the website www.Conscious-Robots.com, an updated list of people researching in the field of machine consciousness is shown below :

  • Dr. Raúl Arrabales Moreno : Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
  • Dr. Igor Aleksander : Emeritus Professor of Neural Systems Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London, UK; Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
  • Dr Will Browne : Senior Lecturer, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
  • Dr. Antonio Chella : Head of RoboticsLab, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica (DINFO), Università di Palermo, Italy
  • Dr. Ron Chrisley : Reader in Philosophy, Director, Center for Research in Cognitive Science, University of Sussex, UK
  • Dr. Axel Cleeremans : Research Director, National Fund for Scientific Research, Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, Consciousness, Cognition & Computation Group, Université Libre de Bruxelles CP 191, Belgium
  • Dr. Stan Franklin : W. Harry Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor, Cognitive Computing Research Group
    Department of Computer Science, Institute for Intelligent Systems, The University of Memphis, USA
  • Dr. David Gamez : Research Associate, Department of Computing, Imperial College, London, UK
  • Dr. Ben Goertzel : Cross-disciplinary scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, manager, writer, speaker; CTO, Genescient Corp, Irvine CA, USA; CEO and Chief Scientist, Novamente LLC, Rockville MD, USA; CEO and Chief Scientist, Biomind LLC, Rockville MD, USA
  • Steve Grand : Director, Cyberlife Research Ltd., Somerset, UK
  • Dr. Pentti O A Haikonen : Adjunct Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
  • Owen Holland : Professor of cognitive robotics (Informatics) in the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, UK
  • Dr. Ray Kurzweil : entreprenuer, leading inventor, author, restless genius, ultimate thinking machine; he has received nineteen honorary Doctorates and honors from three U.S. presidents; in 2002 he was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in USA
  • Dr. Riccardo Manzotti : Assistant Professor in Psychology, IULM University, Milan, Italy
  • Dr. Hugo Gravato Marques : Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
  • Dr. Michael Loren Mauldin (alias Fuzzy) :  Founder and chief scientist of Lycos ; Director of Conversive, Inc.
  • Peter Plantec : Clinical psychologist, animator, virtual human designer ; author of the book Virtual Humans; founder of Virtual Personalities, Inc. (now Conversive, Inc.) in order to create the first virtual human interface Vperson (now Verbots)
  • Dr. Uma Ramamurthy : Asst. Professor & Director of Research Informatics, Dan L. Duncan Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA
  • Dr. Ricardo Sanz : Professor in Systems Engineering and Automatic Control and coordinator of the Autonomous Systems Laboratory research group at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Madrid, Spain
  • Dr. Anil Seth : Co-Director, Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science (SCCS), University of Sussex; Reader, School of Informatics, University of Sussex; EPSRC Leadership Fellow; Visiting Professor, Dept of Psychology, University of Amsterdam
  • Dr. Murray Patrick Shanahan : Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Department of Computing, Computational Neurodynamics Group, Imperial College London, UK
  • Dr. Aaron Sloman : School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, UK

Virtual Assistant Denise by Guile3D

Posted on by

Last update : May 30, 2014

Virtual Assistant Denise

Guile 3D Denise

Guile 3D Studio, a company founded in 2001 by System Analyst, Artificial Intelligence Specialist and 3D Graphic Artist Guile Lindroth, created the advanced Virtual Assistant Denise. She comes with a real-time proprietary graphic engine, a high quality English Text to speech voice and a Voice Recognition engine. Denise works with an adaptive Artificial Intelligence Brain, based on AIML, that can learn by itself and be customized by user.

Denise was the winner of the Chatterbox Challenge 2011 in the category Best New Bot. In 2014 Denise was the winner of the 1st place in the Chatterbox Challenge..

In september 2011, Guile 3D teamed up with NeuroSky for a brainwave impulse control interface. The NeuroSky MindWave headset is the first product available for the consumer market. As a turnkey brainwave sensing headset, it uses the same bio-sensor as the Mattel MindFlex, Star Wars Force Trainer and NeuroSky’s research tool the MindSet. It measures brainwave impulses from the forehead from a position neuroscientists call FP1 with research grade precision.

In the same month, Guile 3D teamed up with EMOTIV for computer-brain control interface. Based on the latest developments in neuro-technology, Emotiv has developed a revolutionary new personal interface for human computer interaction.

In 2013 an Avatar Builder SDK was announced which was however never released up to now. In January 2014, Guile 3D Studio became NextOS. The company will now focus in the Home Automation area as well improve the Virtual Assistant Technology. In April 2014 NextOS stopped for a while the work on the desktop version Denise 2.0 to get the Home Automation and the mobile modules ready. Late May 2014, NextOS started an Alpha testing phase for Virtual Denise Mobile on iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 platforms. For this purpose NextOS uses both TestFlight, a free platform to distribute beta and internal iOS applications to team members and .