Keepon

I subscribed to Ambidextrous, Stanford University’s Journal of Design. The magazine is edited by the Stanford Design community and receives content from contributors around the world. It’s a very well-done publication and I would recommend subscribing if you are a designer, engineer, scientist, anthropologist, interaction, UX, HCI, or really anything else because you’re bound to find these articles worthwhile.

Reading through issue nine, I was particularly impressed by a robot designed by Hideki Kozima in Kyoto and programmed at Carnegie Mellon by Marek Michalowski. It is known as Keepon (from Japanese kee for yellow and pon for bobbing). This robot is designed for interaction with humans, particularly children with developmental disorders such as autism. The little yellow dancing robot has been able to elicit social behavior from autistic children that was impossible to achieve from directed human interaction. Keepon has a microphone in it’s “nose” and two cameras for eyes along with four degrees of mechanical freedom that allow it to rotate, bob, pitch, and yaw. The software processes visual and auditory stimuli that allow the Keepon to invent dances when it hears music and engage eye contact with people, as well as other seemingly intelligent responses.

No, they’re not for sale unfortunately, but Keepon has danced to a song by Spoon on YouTube, leading to its debut acting role in an official Spoon music video.

Emotional Response


Dancing


Starring in the Spoon “Don’t You Evah” music video

This little yellow dancing robot has melded high tech, human interaction, emotional response, and high value seamlessly. I really hope this robot reaches the mass market.

You can actually read the whole article as a .pdf to preview Ambidextrous Magazine and you can follow the progress of Keepon via its website, BeatBots.org.