More From David Hanson On Genius Machines

 Artificial Intelligence  

David Hanson spoke recently with Adam Ford about genius machines and other artificial intelligence and robotics projects he is currently working on, including Bina 48 for the Terasem Movement Foundation.

Earlier this month, we featured a TED talk by natural robotic interface pioneer David Hanson on creating genius machines.  Following up, Hanson also spoke with Adam Ford about the topic and other artificial intelligence and robotics projects he is currently working on.

Hanson's and Ben Goertzel are teaming up with other experts to create robotic toddlers.  Their project is currently seeking crowd funding at indiegogo.

Hanson is an American robotics designer and researcher, responsible for the creation of a series of realistic humanoid robots. His robots exhibit human-like, realistic facial expressions and conversational abilities.

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He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in film/animation/video, while developing robots as art. Hanson later worked as a sculptor and a technical consultant at Walt Disney Imagineering. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in spring of 2007. Hanson currently serves as president and founder of Hanson Robotics.

Hanson's robots were shown first at the 2002 AAAI conference in Edmonton, Canada and in 2003, he showed the Kbot at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting. In 2005, Hanson and team received an AAAI award for their "intelligent conversational portrait" of Philip K. Dick.

First shown at the 2005 Nextfest, the robot incorporated thousands of pages of the writings of PKD, including journals and letters, into an LSA corpus and conversational system constructeandroid. In November 2005, Hanson demonstrated an expressive walking humanoid, a portrait of Albert Einstein, in collaboration with the KAIST Hubo group of Korea. KAIST built the walking body, and Hanson built the head using a flexible rubber like skin material he has created called Frubber.

Hanson has also designed and built a series of Conversational Character Robots. These have heads incorporating Frubber, with varying levels of facial mobility and expressiveness, and are capable of responding to human speech. Projects include Joey Chaos, Jules (created for University of West England in Bristol, UK) and Alice (created for MIRALab in Geneva, Switzerland). Hanson Robotics.

In transhumanist circles, Hanson has been involved with the 2045 Initiative and is also behind the technology and programming of the Bina 48 'robotic portrait' for the Terasem Movement Foundation.  In the TEDx video below Bruce Duncan, Managing Director of Terasem shares a project status update on the Lifenaut project that seeks to allow anyone with an internet connection to transfer their essential information about who they are for later re-animation in virtual reality.

Bina 48, an android, who represents an early concept of the project, based on Bina Rothblatt co-presents with Duncan.




SOURCE  Adam Ford, TEDx Talks

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