In my exploration of Robotics and Narrative, this week I've continued talking to technologists about how I can get Daemon to do what I want. Here's my notes from a chat about using iPhone apps with Tim Kindberg from Matter2Media. Followed by my second visit to Bristol Uni. Computer Science Dept. to talk about Brain Computer Interaction. At the end are my thoughts that have come from other conversations this week:

Chat with Tim Kindberg:

How do you and your Daemon talk to each other? 

It wants to talk to you, it’s had a thought so it puts its hand up or some gesture.

You bring it close to you, to your ear, there's a proxiomity sensor in its ‘mouth’, maybe it whispers to you.

It says

  • what it wants to say,

  • what its been thinking about,

  • where you are,

  • What you said when you last spoke – it remembers what you’ve said before.

  • A human could answer for it

  • lots of people could answer for it, the wisdom of crowd choose what it says to you

  • these could be your friends if you want.

    Can phone apps be used to help you and the robot talk to each other?

To do this it’s connected to your phone.

Google Speech – needs to be wifi to intercept the google pages then text to speech. Could use an AI like Pandorabot, Google Speech and text to speech.

There’s also a text to speech iphone app by Acapela.

The daemon has a phone in it.

Connect Daemon to your phone – you get directions on your phone or whatever it wants you to see/read/hear.

Voice recognition – IBM Via Voice or Dragon Naturally Speaking. There’s an iphone app for this – voice to text that learns your voice. Plus Pandorabot or our version.

Programme running inside Daemon to:

  • speak back to you

  • connect to google

  • voice to type, to our programme, to type, to text to speech.

 

Bristol Uni. Computer Science Dept.: chat about Brain Computer Interaction:

Today I met student Vi, who is studying the Emotiv kit by Neurosky . At the moment Vi is exploring the software and everything Emotiv can do on the PC screen, like moving objects in video games by thinking up, down, left right. I asked him about all the possibilities for controlling real world objects, robotics and all kinds of applications and he was very encouraging indeed. So for the next stage of my R&D there will definitely be some moves made towards using BCI. I want to move stuff with my mind!!!! It would literally be a dream come true.

 

Other notes from this week: 

 I was wondering if Daemon is like an analogue synth, itmakes emotional music, where person meets machine.

A kind of retro Close Encounters kind of thing.

it references films and books. It actually reflects my own, Hazel Grian's personality. 

 Nabaztag wifi ‘rabbit’ by Voilet.  Uses RFID tags and speechrecgnition. 

Therapy – it listens, it remembers and feeds back questions and statements to you to help you decide how you feel and act to help yourself be less lonely and isolated and depressed.

You help yourself by spending time with it it reflects back to you what you’re saying to it in a way that allows you to make decisions.  

Dan told me about 750words.com – libraries that work out howyou feel from what you write and the kind of language you use. It needs you towrite 750 words a day.

Etoy

The rock music sample site – text to music – that SimonJohnson showed me.

I’m thinking about touch sensors, volume sensors, movementproximity, play music, text chat.

Other things I want to write up:

A Manifesto of Role Playing in Public

Rules of the Coneheads as performed by The Natural Theatre Company

Documenting this project