Welcome to my microscope pictures page. I am using the IntelPlay QX3 Microscope to take a look into the small world. Click on the pictures to enlarge them. Continue reading “The small world”
Emotional Adaptive Robots
In analogy to living creatures in nature, two robots will live in a constrained environment, which forces them to compete for resources. The robots will have certain attributes and behaviors, which will evolve through an adaptive system. This will lead to the development of different strategies for survival. Observers will be able to understand the situation and its dynamics by observing and listening to the emotional expressions of the robots. Continue reading “Emotional Adaptive Robots”
Social Robotics
Robots will play an important role in society. We need to ensure that robots are socially compatible with us in order for society to accept them. Research into the social aspects of human-robot interaction will enable engineers to constructs robots that successfully integrate into our everyday lives. This page summarizes my activities in the field of social robotics.
You may also want to have a look at the International Journal of Social Robotics and the Entertainment Robotics Section of the Entertainment Computing Journal. We are actively involved in these journals and are welcoming contributions.
Research
My research focuses on the social interaction between humans and robots. Therefore my work is closer to the field of artificial intelligence and psychology than electrical or mechanical engineering. You can contribute to the discussion about social robots at the Wikipedia. The following PhD students are or have been associated to this project:
Major projects are:
- Wordovators
- Development of reciprocity model for human-robot interaction
- Understanding Anthropomorphism and Animacy In The Interaction Between Users and Robots
- Robot Interaction Language (ROILA) – An artificial language optimized for easy learning and perfect speech recognition
- RoboDB – A semantic database of robots
Robots
For the various studies it was necessary to build robots or to adapt existing robots. We also have some professional photos of the iCat Robot and Nao vs. Aibo.
- Nao
- PaPeRo
- AdMoVeo
- Lego Beyond Toys (master course)
- eMuu (2002), An emotional robot that interacted with humans
- Tony (2003), A robot as an distributed inteface for time based media
- Emotional Adaptive Robots (2000), Two robotic creatures that competed in an environment for resources
Cooperations
Cooperation and teamwork with leading robotic institutes and researchers are essential for the success of robotic projects. Please contact me if you would be interested in a cooperation.
- NEC
- NZILBB
- Northwestern University
- ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories, Robovie Project (IRC)
- Carnegie Mellon University, People and Robots Project
- Philips Research, iCat Project
- Philips Robocup Team
The LEGO Website
On this large scale project I was in charge of the Icons, the LEGO Gallery and the Catalog Overview. Further more I created Flash animations of building tips. Screenshots of that time (click to enlarge):
 The Homepage |
 The region chooser of the catalog |
 The catalog overview |
 An item of the catalog |
 The Technic homepage |
 The embeded Flash animation |
 Adventure |
 Castle |
 Technic |
Lego CD-ROM
This CD-Rom contains computer animated building instruction for the Miami Beach Patrol Model. The instructions are divided into steps. A movie shows the process and an element list the needed bricks for each step. The user controls the action from a panel. Here are some example QuickTime movies (320×240 pixels), click on the thumbnail pictures to play.
| The Car in the wireframe view (click to enlarge) | ||
 Front view |
 Side view |
 Top view |
| Animations (click to play) | ||
 The steering construction |
 A wild camera transition |
 Sub component assembly |
 The steering wheel |
 The tires |
 The driver |
| Other interesting pictures (click to enlarge) | ||
 Full Rendering |
 CD-Rom Interface |
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