WEBVTT - TechStuff Makes Eye Contact with a Robot 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.760 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.160 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.560 and I love all things tech. And Halloween is over 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:23.639 by the time you hear this. I hope you had 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:26.560 a happy one. But I still have something that falls 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:31.200 into the kind of creepy category, at least in my opinion. 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:34.960 And I discovered this after looking around at tech news 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.920 in general, and I became fascinated by it and figured, hey, 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:40.839 you know, I haven't done a really focused episode on 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:44.920 a very specific implementation of technology in a long time, 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.840 so why not do that now. Now, anyone who knows 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:52.199 me can tell you that I am a sucker for 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:57.320 Disney imagineering, which of course is the peculiar twist on 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:03.560 engineering and innovation that Disney champions. Right. The inventiveness and 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.400 the attention to detail impressed me a great deal. Those 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:11.160 are hallmarks of Disney engineering or imagineering. And I've done 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:14.319 episodes covering various elements that tie into this, from the 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.160 history of upcot to how audio animatronics work. And it's 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.440 that last topic I wish to revisit because not long 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:27.080 ago I read a research paper from Disney Imagineers titled 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:33.040 Realistic and Interactive Robot Gaze. That's g A Z E, 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:36.240 you know, referring to where a person or in this 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:41.040 case uh an object a robot appears to be looking. 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.679 And the paper is fascinating and it's available for anyone 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:47.480 to read for free. So if you find this subject 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.480 matter neat, I really recommend you read it. Now. It 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.280 does get a bit technical. There's some math in there too, 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:56.880 but for the most part, I think it's a pretty 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:02.880 accessible paper. The pictures and good gravy, y'all. The video 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:08.320 that are connected to this project are the stuff of nightmares, 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:11.720 but we'll get to that. The heart of the paper 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:16.400 is all about designing systems so that an audio animatronic 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.800 or or just an animatronic figure can make and maintain 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.639 eye contact or at least appear to with someone who 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.799 is looking at that figure and onlooker. So, in other words, 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:32.360 imagine that there's a Disney attraction at a park, and 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.200 in this attraction you can walk up to a robot. 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.280 It's probably going to be behind like a rail or 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:41.440 inside a booth or something, so that you can't you know, 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:45.760 touch it, and the robot notices you looking at it, 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.720 and it looks you in the eye. And then maybe 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.639 you get to chat with the robot and it maintains 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.600 eye contact with you, and occasionally maybe it's eyes dart 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.360 around to glance at other stuff that's within its field 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.799 of view, or maybe even indicating that the robot is 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.880 appearing to like take a second to think of a response. 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.080 That's kind of what we're talking about here. And here's 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:11.480 the thing. This is surprisingly difficult to do, and it's 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:17.000 extra hard to do without dipping into super unsettling territory. 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.079 So today we're going to learn more about the technology 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:24.000 and the psychology behind this project, as well as what 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:28.560 makes it different from earlier audio animatronics, which is honestly 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:32.000 a good place for us to start. The original audio 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:36.480 animatronics were essentially puppets. In fact, you could argue that 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:42.840 all animatronics are ultimately puppets. Each puppet has a certain 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.000 number of degrees of freedom, and that refers to a 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.760 number of independent directions of motion. So let's take a 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:54.320 simple example. Let's say that a robots neck only has 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.920 one degree of freedom. Well, that would mean the robot 0:03:57.040 --> 0:03:59.480 might be able to nod its head up and down. 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:01.520 But if it could do that, it wouldn't be able 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:03.600 to shake its head or tilt its head, because that 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.840 would be an additional degree of freedom. Or maybe it's 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:08.920 able to shake its head, but it's not able to 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:11.920 nod or tilt because it only has that one degree 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.720 of freedom. That one degree is really limiting, and it 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:20.520 just tells us the full range of of direction emotions 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.320 that any one joint can do, and we typically talk 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.680 about degrees of freedom with joints to express the range 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:32.160 of possible motions the you know, whatever it is can perform. 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:36.000 The enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland was an early example 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:40.040 of audio animatronic ingenuity. It wasn't the very first use 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:43.280 of audio animatronics, but it was an early one, and 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.480 when you learned how it worked behind the scenes, it's 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:50.960 pretty wacky. The various birds, flowers, and other elements in 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:55.080 the attraction connected to a very complex system, including some 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:59.800 pneumatic valves. A pneumatic system uses air under pressure to 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.400 do work, so these valves in turn connected to a 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:08.400 circuit that had thin metal reads as switches. Now, normally 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:11.640 the switch would be open, meaning no electricity can flow 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.720 through the circuit and thus provide electricity to open or 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:19.040 close the valve. But when sounds of a certain frequency 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.719 would play near these reads, it would cause those reads 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:25.240 to vibrate, and you know, depending on the thickness and 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.440 length of the read, that would determine what frequency of 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:32.000 sound would most likely get it to start vibrating. Once 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.760 it vibrated, it would close the circuit and thus allow 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:39.160 power to go through to the respective valve. And every 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:41.200 bird and flower in the attraction had this sort of 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:45.279 system where the sounds playing through the sound system would 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.400 actually cause the individual circuits for those birds and flowers 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.919 to activate. So the chirping of the bird, that chirping 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:54.320 sound was actually the sound that was opening and closing 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:58.240 the the circuit and thus activating the valve that would 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.719 control the bird's beak. And because the figures relied on 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.839 the sound to close the circuit, they were audio animatronics. 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.479 Over the years, Disney would improve on this design, sometimes 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:12.279 by necessity. So for example, when the imagineers set out 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.680 to create the attraction The Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.520 they had to come up with new mechanisms to do 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.600 that because pneumatics would not be a good solution. With pneumatics, 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.520 you've got a couple of limitations that you're working with. 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:29.560 One is that you can't move really heavy stuff effectively 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.159 with pneumatics. Another is that pneumatic pistons tend to move 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:38.320 really fast. It's hard to do controlled slow movements with pneumatics. 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:40.760 So it might be okay for something like a bird 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:44.320 flapping its wings or opening and closing its beak fairly quickly, 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:47.560 but it's not so great for say, a revered US 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:51.920 president lifting his hand. But I've covered that in other episodes. 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:54.880 The really important thing I want to stress is that 0:06:55.000 --> 0:07:00.520 audio animatronic figures have historically been limited to a cific, 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:05.880 pre programmed sequence of motions, so calling them puppets is 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.360 fairly appropriate. These are figures that will do the exact 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:14.160 same sequence of motions until something goes wrong or the 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.600 attraction is shut off for some reason. The pirate and 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.800 Pirates of the Caribbean that is precariously attempting to step 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.960 onto a rowboat is never going to fall into the water. 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:26.720 He's never going to get into the boat, and he's 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.800 never gonna step back onto the shore. He will continue 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:34.520 his balancing act until the end of time. And this 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:37.600 is starting to sound like some sort of Greek myth 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:40.640 about the afterlife at this point. Now, the reason I'm 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.880 bringing this up, the reason it's important, is that creating 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:48.520 an animatronic figure that can actually detect an onlookers gaze 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:53.200 and return it making eye contact can't be totally dedicated 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.520 to following the same set of motions on repeat. There 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:01.240 has to be some room for variability within it. At 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.840 the same time, Disney's whole gig is to create a show. 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:09.000 The amusement parks are show business. If you are in 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:12.040 a public space of one of those parks, like you're 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:15.240 inside the confines of the park itself, walgging a down 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:19.520 Main street or whatever, you are on stage. The employees 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:23.400 are called cast members, and shows, while they can have 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.040 some variation in them, are supposed to follow a general flow. 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.720 They follow a script. And so the imagineers were working 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.680 on creating a figure that would follow a scripted set 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:36.280 of behaviors, but would have the freedom to throw in 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.840 stuff like eye contact now and then the figure, in 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:44.600 a way would be able to improvise. It's jazz Baby. 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:46.839 The tune is more or less set, but how you 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:49.960 go through it allows for a lot of variation. For 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.040 the purposes of this work, the team relied on an 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:56.800 animatronic bust. Now we've kind of dropped the audio at 0:08:56.800 --> 0:09:01.480 this point. Modern animatronic figures are not really driven by 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:06.520 audio signals anymore. They're driven by circuitry and sophisticated computer 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:11.720 systems and programs. Though to be fair, they still often 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.120 are referred to as audio animatronic. But you really need 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:18.240 to see a picture of this thing. I'll do my 0:09:18.280 --> 0:09:21.080 best to describe it, but really you should search this 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:27.600 Disney uh interactive gaze animatronic because who boy, so imagine 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:32.000 the V shaped torso of a bust sculpture, right, It's 0:09:32.080 --> 0:09:34.640 very narrow at the bottom, and it widens up to 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:38.360 the shoulders. It's clad in a white button up shirt, 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:40.880 you know, kind of like an Oxford shirt of business shirt. 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.800 It does have shoulders, but does not have arms. It 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.920 has a head, good golly, it has a head. The 0:09:49.000 --> 0:09:52.560 head of this figure has a sort of plastic skull, 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:56.680 though it's kind of more like a plastic mask than 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.199 a human skull. It doesn't look like a skeleton skull. 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:04.200 It does have eyes, it's even got eyelids, and it's 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:08.719 got teeth. And looking at this thing is a little unsettling. 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:12.920 And that's before it even makes eye contact with you. Now, 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.840 why would you want to make something like this be 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.920 able to make eye contact in the first place. Well, 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:24.280 eye contact is an important social signal. It shows mutual acknowledgement, 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:27.360 and it can lead us to projecting certain things upon 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:31.199 the person or animal that's making eye contact with us. 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.760 We tend to perceive such creatures as possessing a certain 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:38.960 amount of intelligence and sincerity. For example, when I make 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.360 eye contact with my dog Ti Bolt, I perceive him 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:46.440 to be intelligent and alert and loving. Now I have 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.400 no way of knowing what is really going on in 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:53.160 his doggy mind. I suspect it's probably more along the 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.760 lines of is the bald man about to give me 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.120 a treat? I should pay attention, But I like to 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.120 think of it as sincere love. Now, as the paper states, quote, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:07.480 given the importance of gays in social interactions, as well 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:11.280 as its ability to communicate states and shape perceptions, it 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.480 is a parent that gays can function as a significant 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:19.160 tool for an interactive robot character end quote. And I 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:21.840 can totally grock that. I imagine what it might be 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.160 like to a child who's going to Disney World or 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.400 Disneyland for the very first time and going to a 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:32.280 ride or an attraction where there's an animatronic figure, perhaps 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:35.400 one that looks like a famous Disney character, and it 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:38.560 makes eye contact with that child, maybe it even speaks 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:40.839 to the child, and maybe it can respond to the 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:44.400 child of the child speaks back. That sort of interaction 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:46.240 would have been the kind of stuff that would have 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:49.560 stuck with me as a kid well into adulthood, and 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.240 I feel confident about that because I have a lot 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:56.880 of memories of the seemingly magical moments I've experienced at 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:00.400 Disney with far more primitive technology. Is that we're in 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:03.040 the Disney parks when I first started visiting them in 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.400 the nineteen seventies, so I can certainly see the show 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.800 need for this sort of development. But there are numerous 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:12.640 challenges that stand in the way of achieving this goal, 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.880 and they fall into different broad categories. Perhaps the easiest 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.079 set of challenges to conquer is actually the electro mechanical 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.360 side of things. That is, the actual mechanisms that you're 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:27.240 going to use to create these effects, the servos and 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.920 the motors and the other components that will create the 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:33.720 actual motions that will translate into the robot making eye 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:38.920 contact or behaving in otherwise realistic ways. That's one of 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.280 the set of challenges, but there are others. One is 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:45.480 giving the robot the ability to detect the gaze of 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.160 onlookers in the first place. There has to be some 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.880 sort of face recognition and maybe even eye tracking technology 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.600 so that the robot looks at the right spot. So 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:59.360 the electro mechanical parts have to work correctly, but so 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.600 does the robot vision or perception. Otherwise the robot is 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:06.199 going to look in the wrong spot, perhaps staring off 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:09.560 to one side or above or below and onlooker's eye 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:14.160 contact or attempt at eye contact. Another challenge would be 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:16.440 on the programming side. You have to figure out how 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.719 to determine who the figure is going to look at. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.199 You also have to figure out how long the robot 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:26.120 will look at somebody and what could distract the robot, 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.320 and whether or not the robot would return to looking at, 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:32.240 you know, the first person, or maybe look at a 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:35.040 second person, or maybe look at something else Entirely, you 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.319 have to solve the challenge of the program and prioritize 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.480 the order of operations so that the robot behaves in 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:43.920 a way that makes sense, as opposed to a robot 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:47.679 that's just you know, reacting to all visual stimuli in 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.880 a random way, which would be at the very least disconcerting. 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:54.480 And then we get to something that's a bit harder 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.760 to define than degrees of freedom or range of motion 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:02.120 or the hierarchy of programming, and that's human psychology. Now, 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:05.559 as the paper points out, eye contact is an important 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:09.160 social cue for most of us, but there are a 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.960 whole range of humans out there right For people who 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.600 have autism, eye contact can be a really challenging task, 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.040 and it tends to make people who have this type 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:21.880 of autism. It makes their lives a little more difficult 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:26.520 or complicated as a result. It's something that people some 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.280 people anyway, have to consciously deal with. They have to 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.720 remember to do this and work at it. It's not 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.120 it's not a natural behavior for them. So this is 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:37.320 something that can be tricky for human beings, let alone 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:41.240 for robots. Now, while eye contact can help create a 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.320 sense of sincerity and interest, it can also shift over 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:48.560 into more unpleasant territory, such as a sense of predatory 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:52.840 intent or as a comedian I once saw said there's 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.840 a fine line between the casual eye contact of a 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.040 friend and the cold stare of a serial killer. He 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:01.960 was specifically taught king about trying to navigate the tricky 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:05.040 territory of approaching people in order to get to know them. 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.400 But I think the meaning could be used for lots 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:11.160 of scenarios, including an encounter with a robotic figure. And 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:15.640 along with that is the issue of the uncanny valley, 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.120 which I have touched on in previous episodes. I'm not 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:21.920 sure if I've ever actually talked about the origin of 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:25.400 the phrase, however, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:28.960 Technology named massa Hiro Mori coined this phrase in the 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:33.800 nineteen seventies to describe a pretty odd phenomenon. As robots 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.680 become more human like or more lifelike in general, they 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:41.640 become more appealing to us, but only up to a point, 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:44.560 and once they get to that point and go beyond it, 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:51.040 our reception of these robots plunges into the uncanny valley. 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.680 The valley in this case is how humans react to 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.440 the robot. This also applies to other stuff like c 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:00.920 g I characters, for instance, and other words are a 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:04.560 robot that might be a simple industrial arm is one 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:07.440 we probably wouldn't feel very much affinity for, you know, 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.680 it's obviously a machine. A robot that still looks really robotic, 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:14.240 but has you know, arms and legs like a vaguely 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.280 humanoid shape. We would probably feel a little more affinity 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:20.280 towards that make it look a little bit more human, 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.360 but you know, not to the point where anyone would 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:26.880 mistake it for being human. We might like it even more. 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:29.960 But once you start getting close to but not quite 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:33.960 human in appearance and behavior, our response drops to a 0:16:34.000 --> 0:16:37.720 point where a lot of people feel unsettled, or even 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.960 they might feel revulsion when looking at the figure. Something is, 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:45.160 you know, not right. The cues that would normally help 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.800 us identify with the synthetic figure now feel strange and 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.960 maybe even scary. It's possible to get beyond the uncanny 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.080 valley to create a robot or c g I character 0:16:56.440 --> 0:17:00.720 that doesn't initiate this kind of instant revulsion, but it 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:03.480 is very hard to do so. A big challenge is 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:08.240 building an animatronic that doesn't trigger the uncanny value response 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:11.159 either by avoiding the trap of being almost but not 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:14.359 quite human in behavior, you know, by keeping things a 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:18.520 bit more obviously robotic, so there's that clear and distinct 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.840 separation that kind of removes that that response we have, 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:27.160 or creating something lifelike enough that we feel the same 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.760 sort of reactions we would experience if that were a 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:34.399 real human. So it's tough to do. It's easier to 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.879 do the robot approach than it is to get something 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:40.960 that seems human enough that we let our guard down. 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.400 None of these challenges are trivial, but they all require 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:49.000 distinct approaches that must ultimately converge into a single implementation. 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:51.600 When we come back, I'll talk about some of the 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:55.359 technologies in this animatronic figure and the engineering team's philosophy 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.959 behind their design choices. But first let's take a quick break. 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:10.080 The engineering team limited itself to parameters that related to 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.680 creating a robot that could direct its gaze towards onlookers, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.760 which meant they didn't have to worry about it doing 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.520 literally anything else. The audio animatronic bus they used has 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.640 nineteen degrees of freedom total, but the team made no 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:28.600 use of ten of those. They only used nine degrees 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:32.040 of freedom. They focused on the neck, which has three 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.919 degrees of freedom. The eyelids, which have two degrees of freedom, 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.400 the eyes, which also have too, and the eyebrows, which 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:42.479 have two degrees of freedom. The unused degrees of freedom 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:44.840 are for moving the jaw and the lips of the figure, 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.320 but since that's not necessary to make eye contact, the 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:51.400 team just ignored those they didn't need to mess with them, 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.000 which means we get the effect of a robotic skull 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.920 with an unchanging rictus grin staring at us as its 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.679 upper facial area remains animated it. I guess what I'm 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:06.159 saying is I didn't find the overall effect particularly comforting. 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.760 According to the paper, the commands going to these components 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:15.399 come from a quote custom proprietary software stack operating on 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:19.800 a one hurts real time loop end quote. Hurts is 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.160 a cycle per second, so this means that the software 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:26.919 is pulsing out operations one hundred times every second to 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:31.280 control this animatronic bust. Many of those commands aren't only 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.800 about making the bus do something specific, but to do 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:39.399 it in a specific way. Let's get back to the 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.119 Tiki birds as an example. The pneumatic valve that would 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.840 control whether or not pressurized air could travel to a 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.920 specific place like the mechanism that operates a bird's beak 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:52.920 is a pretty simple on or off switch, meaning the 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:55.399 valve is either open, in which case air can flow, 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.199 or it's closed, in which case the air is blocked 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.760 from flowing through. And a debating the mechanism, So the 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:05.000 beak has a natural resting position, and for this example, 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:08.720 will just assume that the rest position is a closed beak, 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:12.119 and so that's what the beak will always return to 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:16.080 when there's no air flowing. To the mechanism that opens 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:19.040 the beak. If we open the valve, it lets air through, 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:21.399 It rushes to the end point, forces the beak to 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:25.280 open rapidly. Closing and opening the valve quickly forces the 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.560 bird's beak to open and close quickly, and when matched 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.080 with a soundtrack, it looks as though the bird is 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.240 speaking or singing, or you know, whatever it's doing. But 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:37.080 that movement is rapid and, just as I mentioned earlier, 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:41.919 not suitable for all animatronic applications. Having life sized humanoids 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:45.080 move with that kind of alarming speed would be scary 0:20:45.119 --> 0:20:49.040 and legitimately dangerous. The greater mass of the figures would 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:51.800 mean you're dealing with larger amounts of inertia. I mean, 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.400 I just imagine what it would look like if Mr Lincoln, 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:56.760 in an effort to raise his hand in a gentle 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:01.400 show of reserve determination, instead violently karate chopped his own 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:05.159 head off. It would be, as the kids say, a 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:10.040 bad look. To create the illusion of life, the animatronics 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:14.480 that Disney designs follow certain general strategies. One is called 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:18.640 slow in and slow out. Now. This refers to general 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:22.280 movements and the ideas that any movement should start off 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:26.240 slowly and then pick up speed as the movement continues, 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:30.080 and then slow down again before coming to a stop. 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:32.879 And it makes the motions appear more fluid, and it 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.320 has the added benefit of not being quite so harsh 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:38.680 on the figures themselves. So when a Disney figure raises 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.720 its hand, the hand should start off moving upward with 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:45.399 a nice, smooth slow motion, pick up a bit of 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.960 speed as it's moving upward, and then slow down again 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:52.199 as it's approaching its end point. And this means that 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.440 the underlying motors and mechanical systems have to be capable 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.240 of achieving the strategy. It's why you can't use pneumatic systems. 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:02.320 They can't be those simple single speed devices that are 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:06.080 either on or off, like the Tiki birds. Oh, and 0:22:06.119 --> 0:22:08.320 I guess I should specify I'm talking in this case 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:11.639 about the original Tiki birds because the birds in the 0:22:11.680 --> 0:22:15.600 attractions today work on updated and more sophisticated computer systems 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:17.760 that take up a fraction of a fraction of the 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.960 space of the old attraction, which essentially required an entire 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:24.920 room filled with cables and tubes to make everything work 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:30.240 underneath the actual attraction itself. Now a few computers handled 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:35.359 the whole shebang. Anyway, Let's get back to animatronics. Some 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.080 of the other guiding principles in animatronic motion that in 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:42.240 turn dictate the types of motors and joints and other 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.680 mechanical elements that the team mustn't use to to make 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:50.000 these happen include designing motions as arcs, meaning the motion 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:54.560 should follow an arched trajectory. Another is that the motions 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:58.960 should have overlap, meaning a robot shouldn't move a single 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:03.320 element like an arm, stop, then go to move on 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:07.840 the next element like the head position, and then stop 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:12.160 and so on, because that would be well, really robotic. Instead, 0:23:12.200 --> 0:23:16.040 the robots motions should overlap with one another so that 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:18.879 Let's say Mr. Lincoln is turning his head at the 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:22.320 same time his arm is going up in determination. Now, 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:26.040 another element that's connected to this concept is that of drag, 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:29.040 which means that the different body parts are moving at 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:31.960 different frequencies or timing. They're not moving all at the 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:35.000 same speed. So, in other words, the speed at which Mr. 0:23:35.040 --> 0:23:38.399 Lincoln turns his head might be slightly faster or slower 0:23:38.440 --> 0:23:41.280 than the speed at which his arm goes up. This 0:23:41.359 --> 0:23:44.560 is all in an effort to create the illusion of life, 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:47.960 but it also means that the programming in hardware underlying 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:51.840 the figure has to support those strategies. For the purposes 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:54.919 of this project, the engineers had certain motions they wanted 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:58.000 to be included. One minimum set of motions needed were 0:23:58.080 --> 0:24:02.360 some that would imply that the bust was a breathing entity, 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:04.920 So I need to move slightly as if it were 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.960 drawing breath. Blinking was also an important motion to get down, 0:24:09.080 --> 0:24:11.359 as it would be more than a little unnerving to 0:24:11.359 --> 0:24:14.440