Engineered Arts

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Engineered Arts
IndustryHumanoid robots
Founded2004; 20 years ago (2004)
FounderWill Jackson
Headquarters
Falmouth, Cornwall
,
England
Websiteengineeredarts.co.uk

Engineered Arts is an English engineering, designer and manufacturer of humanoid robots based in Cornwall, England. It was founded in October 2004 by Will Jackson.[1]

History[edit]

Three early versions of Robothespian performing in The Eden Project's "Mechanical Theater".

The company was founded by Will Jackson in 2004. While working on exhibitions for London's Science Museum in the 1990s, Jackson came upon the need for a machine that could explain concepts and ideas to people repetitively in an entertaining way and not to be nervous when talking to a group of people. In 2005, Jackson's work on the "Mechanical Theater" for The Eden Project would produce the company's first humanoid robot, RoboThespian Mark 1.[2]

The company's early work included, creative and science education projects for Kew Gardens in London, Glasgow Science Centre in Scotland and other non-robot work. After completing the installation of a robot theatre at Copernicus Science Centre in 2010 the decision was made to focus solely on robot hardware and software.

Products[edit]

Ameca[edit]

Main article: Ameca (robot)
Ameca humanoid robot, generation 1

Ameca is a humanoid robot designed as a platform for Artificial Intelligence research and human interaction applications. It was launched at CES in Las Vegas USA in January 2022.[3] Its main focus on human-like expressions and range of facial movement.[4] In its demonstration, it was made to mimic an operator's face using a mobile phone that had built-in LIDAR and used Apple's ARKit tools.[5][6]

Mesmer[edit]

Mesmer is a humanoid robot. Its key design feature is its face covered by a skin-like rubber, that can exhibit human-like expressions and characteristics. It was created and manufactured using 3D scans of human models taken in-house, allowing Engineered Arts to accurately mimic human bone form, skin texture, and emotions.[7]

Robothespian[edit]

RoboThespian is an interactive, animatronic humanoid robot[8] with LCD screens for eyes,[9] powered by Pneumatic motors, it and speaks more than 30 languages, and can be found on public display worldwide.[10]

Will Jackson (right) of Engineered Arts Ltd with the Robothespian

It is 1.75 metres (5 ft 9 in) tall, weighs in at 33 kilograms (73 lb), sports an aluminium chassis and a body shell made of polyethylene terephthalate plastic and its body offers over 30 axes of movement.

Internally it uses a Parallax processor for motor control[11]

Over fifty are currently permanently installed worldwide,[12] including:

Academic institutions, including:

Socibot[edit]

Innorobo 2015 - Engineered Arts - Socibot

Socibot was a static torso with a projected face. It integrated the core technologies of RoboThespian but in a desktop- or kiosk-sized form-factor.[17] with a projected computer-generated face and articulated neck a simple and affordable introduction to advanced robotics.[18]

This robot has been sold to places such as:[19]

Public installations:

  • Putnam Museum, Iowa, USA
  • Parc Futuroscope, France
  • Espace des Sciences, France
  • Bal Robotov, Russia

Academic institutions, including:

Custom robots[edit]

Ai-Da[edit]

Ai-Da Robot at Abu Dhabi Art
Main article: Ai-Da

Ai-Da is a humanoid robot based on the Robothespian platform. Completed in 2019, Ai-Da contains no conversational AI capabilities and is tele-operated using Engineered Arts Tin Man software. Its core function is creating drawings, paintings, and sculptures, with the use of a bionic hand and ocular cameras.[20] She is named after Ada Lovelace.

Dr Kalam[edit]

A variation on the standard Mesmer, this robot was modelled after 11th President of India, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam for display at Military Might, Chandrapur, Maharashtra.

Fred[edit]

Fred was created as part of the PR campaign to promote the TV series Westworld.[21] The robot employed Tin-Man technology to interact with customers in a London pub.

Technologies[edit]

Rather than use an "off the shelf" operating system such as ROS, Engineered Arts uses its own OS called "Tritium".[22] It is designed to make their robots easy to program by non-technical people and operated from any location.

Tinman a telepresence program that allows a robot's owners to communicate with an audience via the robot's "personality", while themselves being remote.[23]

IOServe provides a generic way to link and program all robot hardware and runs under Linux. It has the ability to capture motion  data and replay it and modify existing motion sequences on the fly, including an interface to the open source 3D program Blender [11]

In popular culture[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "ENGINEERED ARTS LIMITED people - Find and update company information - GOV.UK". find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
  2. ^ "Profile: Who are Engineered Arts?". TechnologyMagazine. 9 December 2021. Retrieved 11 January 2023.
  3. ^ "Second-Generation Of "World's Most Advance Humanoid Robot" Is Here To Say Hello". IFLScience. 26 August 2022. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
  4. ^ "They Put GPT-3 Into That Robot With Creepily Realistic Facial Expressions and Yikes". Futurism. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  5. ^ "Ameca Robot perfectly mimics your facial movements in real time". stealthoptional.com. 2 September 2022. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  6. ^ Madi (29 August 2022). "Robot Mimics Human Expressions". Mecharithm. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  7. ^ GRACE, HANNAH (14 December 2021). "Humanoid Robot Mesmer Goes Viral for Realistic Facial Reactions: "Real Androids Are Coming"". iTechPost.
  8. ^ "RoboThespian: the first commercial robot that behaves like a person". the Guardian. 17 August 2014. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  9. ^ "Robothespian humanoid robot delivers human-like stage performances". New Atlas. 15 November 2011. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  10. ^ "RoboThespian - ROBOTS: Your Guide to the World of Robotics". robots.ieee.org. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  11. ^ a b "RoboThespian | LEARN.PARALLAX.COM". learn.parallax.com.
  12. ^ "RoboThespian At a Glance - Engineered Arts Wiki". Engineered Arts. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  13. ^ Nijholt, Anton (July 2018). "Robotic Stand-Up Comedy: State-of-the-Art" (PDF). Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions: Understanding Humans. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 10921. pp. 391–410. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-91125-0_32. ISBN 978-3-319-91124-3 – via ResearchGate.
  14. ^ "Robothespian".
  15. ^ "'Robot Revolution' Returns to Chicago". WTTW News. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
  16. ^ Fitzmaurice, Maurice (30 April 2015). "W5's singing robot is probably smarter than you". BelfastLive. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
  17. ^ "SociBot - Engineered Arts Wiki". wiki.engineeredarts.co.uk. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  18. ^ "Socibot". Robots Of London. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  19. ^ "SociBot At a Glance - Engineered Arts Wiki". wiki.engineeredarts.co.uk. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  20. ^ "Robot Ai-Da will speak to the House of Lords in Westminster - CBBC Newsround". Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  21. ^ "Profile: Meet Fred: Your pubs new local". Engineered Arts Ltd. 25 June 2018. Retrieved 11 January 2023.
  22. ^ "Tritium". Engineered Arts. Retrieved 4 May 2023.
  23. ^ "TinMan Telepresence - Engineered Arts Wiki". wiki.engineeredarts.co.uk. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  24. ^ "Review: The Uncanny Valley". IEEE Spectrum. 20 January 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  25. ^ "What's the deal with... RoboThespian?". Time Out London. 7 March 2017. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  26. ^ Goldman, Maryann (22 July 2015). "'Robots 3D' Takes You on a Tour of the Latest Advancements in Humanoid Robotics". GeekDad. Retrieved 10 October 2022.
  27. ^ Robots (2015) - IMDb, retrieved 10 October 2022
  28. ^ "WATCH: YouTuber Buys 'Incredibly Creepy' Robot Doppelganger of Himself". News18. 13 April 2022. Retrieved 14 October 2022.

External links[edit]

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