RoboThespian the robot actor - programming movement with Blender

RoboThespian demonstrates how his movement routines can be created using Blender the open source 3D animation application.
The virtual robot drives the movements of the real robot hardware.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• RoboThespian
• robot
• actor
• humanoid
• android
• Blender
• 3D
• programming
• engineered
• arts
• ltd

[EngineeredArts]

No its not going into space

[AtomFury]

What really catches my eye, is the relatively fluid movement of the limbs to coincide with specific phrases/words and sentence fluency with emphasized tones and whatnot. On that note, is this kind of natural speech retained when done on-the-fly or was this just dubbed beforehand and played?

It looks really nice overall, it would easily catch eyes and attention.

[EngineeredArts]

The speech in this clip is pre recorded - the lip sync is generated on the fly - RT also has a high quality text to speech engine with support for 23 languages - but the emotive quality is not quite so good.

[EngineeredArts]

We did try mechanical eyes - but didn't like them - not as fast or versatile - we plan to use pico projectors for a new version

[SebastianNO2]

Does it like pens?

[RyouuichiKun15]

yeah he is good...but...

CAN HE MOON WALK?! O-O....i don't think so v_v

[Erilis666]

i want my robo thespian to juggle monkeys!

[ffallenaangel]

he said in blender!?

[maxxehdood]

@glenpike

My apologies, I didn't mean to cause offence at all, I just noticed that on the screen showing blender, the motion is very stiff looking, but as I said this may have been done for a reason!

For example, the chicken part at the end, the motion is applied to the hands and not the elbows, which I found rather strange.

Have the interview confirmations been sent out? As I'm not sure if I even have one!

If I did have an interview, I'd love to give it a go!

[glenpike]

@maxxehdood

Not the best thing to write if you want a job.

How about you fix all the problems and bring your results to your interview next week, then we might think about giving you the job.

[maxxehdood]

Wow, the animation is very stiff and amateur looking, perhaps because of the mechanical limitations; I've applied for a job with you to help correct that hopefully!

It'd be great to work with something like this, and push the boundaries of robotics and interactivity.

[quocanh263]

Anyone can tell me how to produce these expressive gestures corresponding to the speech?

[olafmydog]

they should make it look like a real human

[dofollowme]

Why not create a removable synthetic skin, adding a little human attachment to Robothespian that would make him more realistic to a wider audience. After all, a Robot isn't just a robot?