Realistic androids

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Gambit37
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Realistic androids

Post by Gambit37 »

Not at all freaky. No, not at all:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GeminoidDK
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by cowsmanaut »

decent as a make up job, but in the end there is no correct articulation of the eyelids, eyebrows, or mouth.. what makes it creepy is the speed of the "blink" and the fact that the eyebrows go down with it.. no one does that.. and another thing the all do.. they make a movement and the whole body rocks.. :P I find it amusing to note that while they know how the face works, and where the muscles are, they make no effort at all to try to do that with these robots..
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by raixel »

What I find interesting is regardless of the weird things (like what cows said) you can instantly tell its not a person by looking it in the eyes. Seriously, the eyes look dead and I think thats way creepier than its messed up articulation. I think no matter how machine intelligent and human-like they make these things, without true sentience you will always go 'oh f'n creepy' cuz when you look at it theres no one looking back at you.

I wonder where the 'walking dead' or 'soulless eyes' aversion comes from? Obviously it freaks people otherwise zombies wouldnt be so popular. I understand the evolutionary advantage to being able to tell if something has died by looking it its eyes, but why the aversion to something acting alive that isnt?
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by beowuuf »

Think about that scene from LOTR Two Towers where Gollum has that thoughtful moment. You woukld swear that was a real character there, because there was something going on in the eyes. You are right, it is definitely not something we've got to yet, but I also don't think that faking it is impossible.

I don't think it's knowing something has died, I think we probably draw most of our information about the world and where things are from our eyes. And therefore, in a subconscious way, we rely on knowing where a person or predator is looking by knowing where its eyes are focused on. If the eyes are dead, they aren't truly focusing on anything. Therefore, we have no freakin' clue what it is focusing on, and therefore what it is about to do. Our largest clue on behaviour has gone.

That's my thought, anyway. The death stuff, etc is probably a separate but relevant weirdness as well, but it wouldn't surprise me that the root of our instant unease is something to do with that.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by raixel »

Gollum was a real person on some levels, though. The guy who did the voice got so into his role that he crawled around and acted like Gollum and they just overlayed the CG effects on top of him. They actually re-did what they had for Gollum once he started doing that (which is why in the first one with that brief scene with Gollum he looks different). So in some senses there was a real person behind the CGI mask.

Also, Gollum wasnt human. I think if he was the effect would have come off creepier and more unreal. I never saw it but there was a beowulf movie that had human actors overlaid with CGI. My dad watched it and he said 'it was creepy as hell cuz their eyes were dead''. Ive noticed that if there is a creature/monster CGI or android the effect doesnt happen, or if the representation of a human is such that you can look at it right away and say 'that isnt real' -ie Final Fantasy spirits within, you dont get that sense of WTF CREEP'D. The representation has to be human enough that on first glance it passes muster.

But yeah, it could be a predator thing. I ended up face to face with a black bear once while hiking (Joy of living in WA state, neh?). It was like 5 feet from me, ambling across the path me and my friend were on. We stopped, it stopped. It looked at us, and we froze. Then we started doing what everyones been told to and not look in its eyes while jumping up and down and making a lot of noise. I swear the thing looked us up and down for a few seconds like 'WTF are these things doing" and went *HUFF* real loud and sauntered off. Weird thing was, i could tell where its eyes were looking even though I wasnt looking directly at it, and i could tell when it lost interest.

But then if that was the case, why does the creep effect really only trip when looking at a figure that looks completely human at first glance?
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Jan »

raixel wrote:Then we started doing what everyones been told to and not look in its eyes while jumping up and down and making a lot of noise. I swear the thing looked us up and down for a few seconds like 'WTF are these things doing" and went *HUFF* real loud and sauntered off.
ROFL. I can just imagine him returning to his bear-home and telling about it to his bear-wife and bear-children. They must have thought you were completely out of your mind. :D

I've never met a bear so close "face to face" but I saw a lot of them in the wilderness from about 50 or so metres. In the highland where I live, there are no bears, and the last wolf was shot dead about 200 years ago. No fun. :(
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by beowuuf »

True, but the animation of the eyes were not based on his performance on that realisation moment. Yeah, the Beowulf animated film suffered a little from uncanny valley, partially duie to the 'stiffness' of animation on known faces, combined with the eyes not being quite right I think. A better example is Jeff Bridges in Tron. There's something off about his eyes and mouth, even though they've got the face very expressive. If the character was only seen in the grid, and seen on his own, he would actually be acceptable in some ways, but placed as real jeff bridges i nthe real world, and up against actors, he just seems weird.

And I think that we have our own set of responses for stranger creatures (Like insects, etc) that is also creeped out, but it's expected. The closer something is to a 'safe' pattern, and yet has something off, the more we'll be creeped out by it I guess!


And that bear story is pretty intense! Worse thing we have walking n UK, nasty bulls.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Zyx »

Those fake androids are decoys to make us think that we still have time before becoming suspicious about other humanoid beings. Realistic androids have been among us for quite some time. Statistically, of the six "persons" who intervened in this thread, only half are human. The other half were programed to think they are.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Gambit37 »

*bang!*
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Jan »

*plop*

Oh, my, something didn't work. These days, even the self-destruction systems are not what they used to be. I wonder why... oh, I see: "Made in China".
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by cowsmanaut »

something I should have mentioned is that we're likely to get realistic cyborgs much sooner.

car driving with your mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDV_62QoHjY

insect brains controling devices. there was an additional video for this but I didn't see it linked.. but this gives you the basic idea
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSCLBG9K ... ure=relmfu

Rat brains in this one show some interesting erratic behaviour. Much like a rat itself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPiF4-i ... ure=fvwrel

cyborg monkeys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz_DV7el ... re=related

I think actually the closes to androids we've gotten is big dog
big dog. recovers automatically from most things and can find it's way around, but not exactly stealth
http://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics#p/u

however in the end the cyborg monkey and the rat brain robot speaks volumes about controling devices with a brain.. and the car says that the human brain has been mapped enough to get us close. Though I wonder where the latency comes in since the monkey doesn't have that.. I suppose the monkey is directly plugged in though.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by raixel »

The 'rat brain' one is obviously fake and is just a fancy looking remote controlled or perhaps has an avoidance program coded into it using the lasers type vehicle. What got me was 'The rats brain is kept in a bell jar and receives impulses via bluetooth". Um no. A) A bell jar?! Yeah right. If a brain was to survive out of a body, it would need to be in some kind of membrane like a meninges(sp) and be in a sterile carefully temperature and nutrient controlled environment. And AFAIK, humans havent figured out how to keep a brain alive never mind functioning outside of the body. b) Bluetooth? Technology has not gotten to the point where we can do anything but direct electrode implantation, even that still requires all the sight/sense organs the animal is already using. We cannot just 'use bluetooth' and magically hook a brain up to a robot. And even if we could, where the hell are the sight/sense organs on the robot? All I see is a bunch of green lasers. No mammal brain can use that for sight. How the heck would green diode lasers transmit through bluetooth to a disembodied rat brain? c) Even if all of the above were true and somehow magically working, this would be international news in a reputable scientific/behavioral journal and maybe even make mass media. d) and finally, at no point does it show the 'rat brain' that is supposedly controlling all of this. If you had managed to pul this off, there should at LEAST be a shot of the 'rat brain'
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Zyx »

I have no time to find detailed articles, but...
raixel wrote:And AFAIK, humans havent figured out how to keep a brain alive never mind functioning outside of the body.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_brain
Humans did, but were forbidden to continue.
raixel wrote: Technology has not gotten to the point where we can do anything but direct electrode implantation, even that still requires all the sight/sense organs the animal is already using. We cannot just 'use bluetooth' and magically hook a brain up to a robot. And even if we could, where the hell are the sight/sense organs on the robot? All I see is a bunch of green lasers. No mammal brain can use that for sight.
An example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_prosthesis


Both articles are succinct but you can find more literature about this kind of experiment on the web.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by cowsmanaut »

Wish I had the article, but they have grown rat brain cells before and used them in primitive computing examples back in the late 80s (88 or 89 I think). This is not a new concept. They were able with a set of external devices, to teach the brain cells to input and output values based on readings of light and dark, and to do simple math equations. more than 20 years ago they could do this.. why should it be surprising to include a bluetooth interface for that input now? The article was written in Time magazine, I saw it in some doctors office when I'd read it.

As for keeping biological devices "alive" for an extended period of time, it's not like we're not doing similar things. OLED is an organic material.. the first difficulty they had was in keeping it "alive" for more than 1000 hrs. Now it's in devices that people expect to use for years rather than just a week or less. Sustaining the brain matter requires electrical impulses and a suitable oxigenated fluid. Not as if we do not have the possibility of creating such environements. (and apparently the proof is in ZYX posts above)

I very much believe the rat brain robots and I should note that there are at least 2 other companies building their own designs with the same idea of using rat brain cells and also have their videos on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-0eZytv6Qk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wACltn9QpCc
there are a whole lot more videos of other similar uses.. teaching these brain cells to do different things..
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by raixel »

Really? Cool. Thanks for the info guys. I had no idea. I do wish taht there had been more info. It REALLY just looks like its a fancy remote control car.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Lord_BoNes »

I must say that those videos were very interesting to watch. I especially like big-dog... except the chainsaw noise coming from it :P
However, I'd have to agree with the consensus that Geminoid is "creepy", those eyes are just "off". I also have to agree that the more realistic we make these robots, the creepier they're going to become, until we actually get a perfect one and nobody can tell it's even a robot... but until then, we're stuck with these strange and creepy looking creations.
 
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Roquen »

I think that "eyes" are easy. There just aren't that many "hints" that they the provide. Focus point and iris dilation. You've never met someone with a modern glass eye? Which is obviously missing 1 out of the 2? Maybe I'm slow, but it's usually taken me awhile to notice that something was off, much less what it was. Facial expressions are a real problem due to the mass number of muscles involved.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Lord_BoNes »

Roquen wrote:Maybe I'm slow, but it's usually taken me awhile to notice that something was off, much less what it was.
I know what you mean here. I'm not a slow person, and at times we can almost pull it off (it almost fools me). But, there's always a 'giveaway sign' that ruins the effect. As Cowsmanaut said further up, it is ruined by the fact the the eyebrows move too much and that the robot 'rocks' whenever it moves. This is the 'make or break' part of the effect. And without it, it just comes off as creepy looking.
 
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Gambit37 »

This is going back a few years now, and it's nothing to do with realistic androids, but it's still fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZzLAsHiGHU
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Zyx »

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Re: Realistic androids

Post by Joramun »

About face expression and such, there are actually some way to make it look natural: Perlin Noise. It induces some randomness which make things look natural / fractal. This example is pretty rough, but you get the idea.

The main problem would be to have all the actuators to move the skin, but I think it's close to feasible right now. But that's not the point: faking a face doesn't make a "realistic android". What's important is faking a personality, and now programs are increasingly better at passing the Turing test...

Now on the other side of the "artificial life", you have cyborgs: biological life with symbiotic tools. And though the ability of transplanting a brain (and the utility of it) can be discussed, the progress of ear and eye prosthesis, as well as the demonstrated plasticity of the brain to adapt to new conditions or connexions, leave little doubt that cybernetic implants are for the near future, once moral frontiers on physical integrity are displaced (tattoos and piercing are commonplace, why not interactive devices ? - a punk who accepts to have a screw in his skull can well enough accept to have a USB plug :wink: ).

The only limit is whether adult brains are plastic enough or not: it might have to wait for parent accepting to experiment on their children for the technology of brain-computer hybridation to work. There is also the risk that it is experienced on other animals first, and if it makes them more clever than (or close to) us (a rat, dog or chimp with enhanced calculation, logic and memory might well surpass a man !!) they might emancipate or take us down.
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Re: Realistic androids

Post by floranicolas »

Part of the Geminoid series of realistic androids. The reason why the robot’s movements and expressions seem so realistic is because they are controlled by an operator who uses a motion-capture and facial-tracking system.
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