Our goal is to create technology that enables animatronic figures to become conversationally interactive. Further goals include allowing these characters to become aware of their environment, and react accordingly.
The goals were met by combining a multitude of technologies (speech recognition, synthetic interview, discussion engine, audio, vision, and animatronic technologies) resulting in a new medium for interactive entertainment.
The character was developed, and “brought to life” through a custom-built animatronic head, off the shelf hardware and software, and custom software.
We hope to progress towards the next generation of animatronic character technology.
The Interactive Animatronics Initiative (IAI) is a joint initiative between the Field Robotics Center (FRC) and the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
Carnegie Mellon University, Entertainment Technology Center (c) 2001