This is a really cool little project!
I think projects like this, as well as Disney's recent incredible robots (e.g. https://youtu.be/-cfIm06tcfA?si=D3SKsNekOaDQFeVU) mean it's just a matter of time until we have pretty real, embodied robots in people's homes. There will probably be some viral videos about that, and I imagine some company that can sell at an attractive price is going to make a lot of money one day.
I love how the Roy Batty monologue from the original Blade Runner movie ("I have ssen things you people wouldn't even believe...") keeps popping up. The robot acutally looks like it was made J. F. Sebastian, so making it say the monologue at the end was a very nice touch IMO.
The title is verbatim.
I have nothing to do with this channel, but the final product is really cool.
Is this safe? How many kV is on the CRT?
I really like his point about how our realized future of the "robot companion" is so lifeless and utilitarian compared to what we used to imagine. I guess it makes sense given how the adoption of voice assistants predated widespread LLMs by about 10 years, and voice assistants were never even close to feeling "alive" in any sense.
I'd love to see something like this manufactured at scale once the LLM ecosystem matures a little bit. As someone who has never quite felt comfortable using voice assistants, it might actually be the ingredient I need to make the whole thing feel enjoyable.
Reminds me of the old YTV's purple monster. "Snit"
Was posted a while ago. So fantastically cool
An exposed CRT like that is quite dangerous no? Capacity discharge could easily kill.
Very cool! Looks like Wall-E.
We made some "One Minute Movie" robot reality TV spots at the Stupid Fun Club, about Empathy [1] and Servitude [2], written by Will Wright, who also participated in Battlebots with his daughter Cassidy and their vegetative robot Super Chiabot [3] [4].
Empathy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrbqXPnHvE
Servitude:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg
BattleBots Missing Link vs. ChiaBot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx3VKd8yDqI
BattleBots Complete Control VS Super Chiabot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELZI2Cx6kWA
The one minute movies never ran due to contractual problems between NBC and SAG. We used hidden cameras, and the humans were real unsuspecting people, but I'll admit it's true they didn't accurately portray the everyday lives of actual robots in the real world: the robot's injuries and Professor Johnson's phone number were fake, and the robot waiter was fired.
The point of NBC's one-minute reality shows was to tell short entertaining two-part cliffhanger stories, which NBC would broadcast as interstitial programming at the beginning and end of commercial breaks, to compel people to keep watching TV and submit to more advertisements.
But the point of Will's stories and performance was to explore how people interact and empathize with robots, discover what their beliefs and expectations are, and probe to test how easy humans are to fool or convince to play along with real-time tele-robotic wizard-of-oz man-behind-the-curtain mumbo-jumbo.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141028194536/http://www.allent...
>In 2003, NBC attempted to add a new feature to prime-time television with "One-Minute Movies." Each original movie unfolded in its first 30 seconds and ended with a cliffhanger, and then a conclusion in the last 30 seconds. The One-Minute Movies were to be used as interstitial programming between commercials and possibly where a show ends a minute earlier than its scheduled running time.
>The idea for the series was brought to NBC by John Wells (“E.R.”) and director Paris Barclay. The ten unique films were written, produced, cast, directed and filmed by assorted talent. Among the talent appearing in or lending their voices (one was animated) to the projects were Michael Richards, Tom Arnold, Carmen Electra, Bill Bellamy, Eddie Cibrian, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Paula Marshall, Jackee Harry, Danny Masterson and Amber Valletta.
>With mechanical robots designed and built by Will Wright (creator of “The Sims”), the two segments directed by James Moll are comedic short films featuring fully functional robots in hidden-camera situations.
>The first, “Restaurant” features a robotic waiter. Coffee shop diners were asked if they would be willing to be seated at a table that will be served by a mechanical server. Then, surrounded by tables filled with hired “extras,” the unknowing customer is approached by a 6-ft tall, fully functional, computerized, talking robot.
>The second film, “Empathy,” also features hidden-cameras. In this case, a broken down, severely damages robot was planted next to a dumpster on a side street in Berkeley, California. As people would pass the robot, it would suddenly move and talk to the passersby. “Help me,” the poor helpless robot would say. Hidden cameras captured various reactions, everything from apathy to empathy.
>After airing only one of the films – featuring “The Pussycat Dolls” -- NBC decided not to continue airing the remaining twelve films.
After a short and unsuccessful career as a waiter, Slats eventually decided that his one true goal in life was to reproduce himself.
So we took him out in public around Berkeley, and shot some video of Slats attempting to seduce men and women off the street.
It was kind of like Speed Dating meets Demon Seed: he tried to talk people into giving him their eggs and sperm, because he needed their genetic material to reproduce himself.
Demon Seed Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNUEp5A9eKU
Demon Seed: The Birth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjrQfNtK0I
Speed Dating with Cupid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM
>Cupid $959 Are you tired of dating weasels, hedgers, pussyfooters and wafflers? Are you ready to dispense with all the beating around the bush you're forced to put up with just to find a yes at the end of a marriage proposal? Let Cupid, the Equivercator help you cut to the heart of things and land yourself the mate of your dreams. No need to wear yourself ragged trying to win the affections of the one you desire. Let Cupid help you secure the proposal, and then you can spend your time on more important matters: You've got a wedding to plan!
The results of our research: It turns out to be a lot easier for a robot to talk a man out of his sperm, than to talk a woman out of her eggs.
This is Slats, the unemployed robot waiter, roaming the streets of Berkeley:
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats1.jpg
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats2.jpg
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats3.jpg
Nancy the Van Seat - Stupid Fun Club:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXG4gQ2FWI
Creativity by Will, Slats & the Stupid Fun Club folks:
Side-note: I watch quite a lot of Youtube videos in this space, and while I quite liked the presenter and the project, I've rarely watched a video with more 'fluff' padding out the content. There were multiple sections of music and irrelevant images that stretched out to 30-40 second each which did nothing but waste my time. At least they're easy to skip.
I get that not everyone wants a dense information-packed how-to video - and indeed, a lot of DIY creators (Colin Furze, for example) seem to have gradually trended away from this style over time. It may therefore be that trying to please the Youtube algorithm ('all hail the algorithm') can drive video producers in counter-intuitive directions, but I really hope that this is an outlier trying to boost their video length, and not the sign of yet more things to come.
Sorry for the tangent dang but since this video mentions Alexa I gotta say that as an Australian I find the ubuiquity of Amazon in the US perplexing.
To me, Amazon is a total mess. The account management is terrible. It has all these crazy region restrictions when you try to buy books, and I just assume that whenever I buy something from the store I'm getting scammed. Everything on Amazon looks like a scam.
Then I hear people in the US buy their groceries on Amazon and use Alexa. It's crazy, what am I missing? The entire company seems like it's strung together with duct tape. I have zero trust in Amazon as a brand to do anything right.
I imagined a world full of robots with personality as well.
I never imagined that that personality would be working for it's real owner (Amazon, Google et al) and trying to control me.
Until it's MY friend, I am not interested in lending some of my soul to it.
We're not on the correct path are we?
This is a cool project but I strongly disagree with its premise that we would need machines with "more personality".
I don't want that.
I want machines that are predictable; not "intelligent" ones that may do one thing one time and another thing another time, for no discernible reason. I expect machines to be deterministic.
I wish the people of the past hadn't forgotten to tell us that the robots of the future would collect our private data and store it on the computers of some gargantuan corporation so that they could profile us better.
Is there a quick NV;DW about what made a robot cool?
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He’s stuck in childhood. Computing should be ubiquitous in my opinion and completely non intrusive. Like the Universal Computer in Asmiovs “Nine Tomorrows”. I don’t ever want a 1980s goofy gremlin bot. I want the computer to completely disappear into the ether and only respond when spoken too. Less technology in sight not more.
Edit: and if I need a physical robot I want its form to follow its function, not an outdated notion of a future we’ve already passed.
Edit2: I think Alexa is the perfect model, but I don't have one because privacy is not taken seriously where I live (United States). Computing as a universal basic service needs to be wrestled away from the capitalism-winning megacorps, and that's about a century off.
I've actually had the pleasure of seeing this robot "in the flesh", as it were. The creator's an old friend and a real nice guy.
He's got a really fun video with an old Soviet games console I particularly enjoyed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mqXT-zj47s