Engineered Arts’ Robothespian robot. (via Robothespian)
Comedians know all too well how hard it can be to be successful when playing to an audience. Being funny is tough and many people simply can’t make the cut even when they thought their jokes were funny. Robots on the other hand have it even tougher and perhaps that is why there are not that many robotic comedians to begin with except in the fictional realm. Sure, there was Johnny-5 from Short Circuit (really not that funny) and Bender B. Rodriguez from Futurama, however those bots are funny only on video and will never be a live robot comic, at least not anytime soon.
Compared to the thousands of human comedians there are around the world, there are only two robotic jesters, which have cut their teeth (as it were) recently playing to small audiences. The first, created by Engineering Arts, is known as Robothespian, which is humanoid in appearance and was designed for social human interaction in a public setting. The robot isn’t very autonomous with its movements and speech as it is pneumatically controlled using air and is overall controlled using a tablet PC. The same can be said for its speech even though it functions using a rudimentary AI. It’s programmed with a set of responses for any given question but can also be programmed with new words phrases and it can actually scour the internet to get answers for questions that are asked. If that wasn’t enough, the Robothespian can perform as a telepresence robot that lets users see and hear what people are doing around it while providing vocal feedback through the use of a microphone. Robothespian’s comic debut happened at London’s Barbican Centre in early August of this year as the follow-up act for comedians Andrew O’Neill and Tiernan Douieb. As expected, it only garnered a few laughs from its pre-programmed jokes, which included references to the lackluster OS Windows 8 and its shortcomings as well as R2-D2’s use of swear words that have to be ‘bleeped out’ for the kids.
While the jokes themselves were not that notable, researchers Pat Healey and Kleomenis Katevas (Queen Mary University of London) are using the audience’s reactions to help further develop its social skills. The pair used cameras to track the facial expressions of the audience along with their gaze and head movements to make a comparison between the reactions garnered from both the robot and its human comedic counterparts. Of course, like all comedy shows, there needs to be at least two or more comedians to get the audience rolling, in this case, the first performer happens to be from Heather Knight and her Nao robot aptly named Data. Like Robothespian, this robot was also pre-programed with jokes, however in this case they were delivered with better timing than that of its big brother. Heather used the robot in an experiment similar to that of Healey and Katevas’ in that she’s looking to bring social interaction with robots to a more personal level. In her comedic show, audience members responded to jokes by raising colored paper to signify whether they liked or disliked the joke. Data targets those cards, and based on the majority of the color shown and the amount of applause or booing, adjusts its decision-making process to deliver better jokes. While both robots have a long way to go in terms of comedy, there’s no doubt that sometime in the near future robots will have learned from their engagements and become more socially interactive with humans.
(Thanks Newscientist)
C
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