RoboBrrd at Pixar!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, May 11th, 2012

We had a really lucky opportunity to visit Pixar earlier this week and RoboBrrd came along too! RoboBrrd is quite the robot character as we have all seen, so this was quite special for it. RoboBrrd always chirps late at night how it will one day become an animatronic movie super star! (whatever that means)

Our tour was from @drwave, who I met on Twitter from WWDC’11! EMSL also came along, and it turns out that they also knew him from before. Thanks for the tour drwave!

Pixar is a pretty cool place, at the front there is a huge scale version of the Luxo Jr. lamp and its ball! Check it out!

The inside is super spacious. They probably could fit a spaceship in the atrium area!

Here is RoboBrrd on top of Mike. This would make a great caption contest pic

ROBOBRRD COMES IN PEACE.

This is a very cute picture of Wall-E. Also got a little insight into Wall-E’s arms! For instance, have you noticed how expressive they allow Wall-E to be? It can push them back to look more powerful, but also bring them closer in to make it look more vulnerable.

It’s really cool how many awards Pixar has. Their creativity has brought them to such great heights! These next pics are all from EMSL- thanks guys!

RoboBrrd enjoys trying to communicate with Kevin!

RoboBrrd in an epic staring contest with a bird from For the Birds!

Pixar is a great example of how magical technology combining with art can be. There is tons of computer science that goes on behind the scenes of all the animation, but without the characters and stories it wouldn’t really mean much. It takes them a really long time to render one frame though- about 8 hours.

I wonder how well animatronics could compare in this way. All of the robots would have to be built by hand, but then you can direct them (or they could direct themselves autonomously) and just film the result. You would probably need some computer graphics to enhance explosions and such though. As for faeries now, they aren’t that difficult as you could simply use a UAV.

For large characters this approach might not work well, but for mini swarm characters it would be great. Another cool thing about animatronics would be that the characters would get to roll/walk down the red carpet themselves! With some natural language processing, perhaps they could answer the interview questions as well. Or respond in bleep bloops!

One of the main questions that I’ve had is how to make a squash and stretch robot. For example, Keepon is a squash and stretch robot. These type of robots are always interesting because their degrees of expression are immense. This technique is used often in Pixar films, and it is just fantastic to add more expression to the characters.

Originally I was thinking in terms of using multiple swashplates to get the movement correct. However, it would be a lot better to use a robot that has some sort of volume, like if it is filled with a fluid or something. This answer is a great help! Though in my robots I’ll probably use bean bag beans rather than a liquid, it is a step in the right direction. Really looking forward to trying to make a squwetchy robot!

Thanks @drwave for giving us a tour! You rock! It was fantastic to go to Pixar!

Posted in: EMSL, Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

Female Robot Leader Honored

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, February 24th, 2008

With the U.N. International Women’s Day coming up on March 8th, the Japan Times ran a special series in this Sunday edition highlighting "… the astonishing progress being made against considerable odds by women in Japan working in a wide variety of scientific fields, long thought to be the sole preserve of men."

They selected six women who represent "Japan’s brightest stars in the fields of science, technology and medicine, ranging from geophysics and cancer treatment to biodiversity and robotics." We were very pleased to find that one of these six wonderful women was our own robotics ‘sensei’, mentor, and friend, Yukiko Nakagawa, the founder of RT Corporation.

Congratulations Nakagawa-san! It’s a well deserved honor!

Well done to her! That is quite a feat! After reading about her, she is definitely one of the people whom I will see as a role-model for now on.

Link.

Woah! The RT Corp store has some pretty awesome stuff!

Hats for MANOI! *freaks out with joy*

Sofa for MANOI! *squeaal*

So cool! I can definitely see my MANOI needing those.

On a more serious note, this article is an interesting read.

Then there is the "attractiveness" factor. As robotics expert Yukiko Nakagawa points out, "Girls are considered ‘uncute’ if they go on a date to a science museum and if they know more about the exhibits there than boys."

…Wow much? Going to a science museum would be pretty cool, in my opinion! I don’t understand how women can like science less than men. Is there really that big of a difference? :/ What makes a person different from one another are their decisions and personality! No one has to strictly conform to tradition. I like science and robotics because of the challenges! At the time, I had no clue when I bought my MANOI that it was one of the toughest athlete humanoids. But, with a little ‘work’ — I put work in quotes as it isn’t work since it is FUN, but physically it is work since I am exerting energy to create a force… — it’s going to be alright! I’ll have to figure out the gyros at a later date though. And, I did get it to walk last weekend instead of moonwalking forwards. *thumbs up*

I cannot wait to blog about my science fair project!! Keep a lookout for a post and a page on March 5th! It is really going to change the way humans and machines interact with eachother.

Until then, I’ll still be adding more to it.

Posted in: MANOI, News, Programming, Projects, Robot, Robot News, Tech News.