 |
Art & Artificial Life International Competition | Home | Entry | Editions | References | Español | |
 |
|
PaCo A new installment of the series “humanizing machines” from the sculptor Carlos Corpa, in which he deals with relationships between human beings and non-human agents. His attempt is to provoke reflection about the way in which spaces and activities proper to humans are replaced by their respective technological versions. In this case, thanks to work of Ana María García-Serrano, progress has been made with respect to previous projects. This is due to the robot PaCo’s improved capabilities with its new versions of poetry generation, plus the response from all the web site users who have sent in words, in search of a certain meaning, or tendency in the randomness of their semantic and morphological choices. PaCo is an autonomous humanoid robot tied to a web site. He is built atop a wheelchair and moves through the streets and public places asking for change and giving out synthetic poems, which he recites and prints out, after someone responds to his request. The technological innovation of the current prototype lies in the software that generates the poems. There are three fundamental components to this first prototype: (a) the experience of the Linguistic Engineering group with multi-paradigm structure models for complex applications (www.isys.dia.fi.upm.es), (b) the licensed linguistic resources available (www.daedalus.es), and the developments in Ciao that allow for programming with complex structure and greater efficiency at the time of running it (www.clip.dia.fi.upm.es). The sequence is as follows: PaCo approaches a person while a message is displayed on his head’s monitor, then lifts his right arm whose hand is formed by a coin box like those in church, with a slot in it (like a slot machine), in a clear gesture of begging. If the person puts a coin in, PaCo automatically generates and prints a poem thanks to the specific software working inside the onboard computer. He then drops the written texts at the person’s feet. A voice synthesizer recites the poetry while it is being printed. The robot and its actions are linked to a web site which provides users with several real time images of the subjective view of the robot (like a video conference). This includes a close up of the “customer” and a panoramic of the area. The web site also has a window with all the files of the poetry generated by the robot. The user also has a dialogue box in which to type one or two key words. All of these words together modify the “inspiration” or “humor” of the poet-robot when he chooses from among groups of words (and their inter-relationships) to generate the poetry. The robot’s navigation system is made up of a set of sensors that detect obstacles, plus software that recognizes them in order to avoid them. There is a system of image recognition for locating customers which is fed by an on-board camera that processes these images, showing them on the web site. The result is a navigation that is erratic until the robot finds something he recognizes to be a stationary human. Then the robot approaches this person and begins the process of requesting, generating, reciting and printing. New versions of the software are being planned, both for the navigational and recognition systems, as well as for the module that generates the synthetic poetry. Hardware A sculpture made from an old wheel chair, with a humanoid structure mounted on top. This is made up of a spine that supports the shoulders and head, the mechanical arms, the computer gut (Pentium II, printer, cards, etc.) as well as the motors that move the chair’s wheels. On the head of this humanoid there is an area microphone, a speaker for the voice synthesizer, a video monitor that shows the generated messages and poetry and the cameras that capture the pictures of the surrounding environment and the people that come into contact with PaCo, pictures which are recorded and retransmitted via wireless networks to the web site. Three car batteries under the wheelchair provide the robot’s power source. The overall look is one of junk piled into a scrap pile atop a wheel chair -no shiny high-tech Japanese aesthetic here. PaCo has a PC Celerón in its belly, with a 5” screen, a black and white printer and two batteries. The robot is connected to Internet through an Apache2 server with wireless connection, using a gateway (PC Pentium IV) called PaCo-WiFi. Software Module for generating synthetic poetry: The software is based on components. It contains linguistic information and a set of procedures to generate poetry automatically. The components are as follows: 1. a multilingual dictionary or lexicon; 2. a morphological analyzer; 3. a correct phrase generator which uses morphological variations of the dictionary words that agree appropriately; 4. a data bank containing many of the possible grammatical structures of Spanish; and lastly, 5. a component that controls the generation of a series of rhyming phrases, based on the specific number of syllables and the end sounds, synalephas, etc. (or with random rhyming). The poetry generator works by choosing one of the correct grammatical constructions in Spanish (i.e. article-subject-verb) and substitutes one or several words to form new random verse. The multilingual lexicon is EuroWordNet (or a version of this), which is organized around word relationships. It allows one to work with word groups (or synsets) related due to being synonyms, antonyms or having some other filiation. Navigating between these word groups will be an innovative addition to the current state of short text generation, in non-restricted domains and bound by rhyme restrictions. Through an evaluation of the components developed, the goal is to automatically construct stanzas with phrases that follow along the same “line or idea”. Moreover, a method will be specified for analyzing the results of the automatic poetry generator once implemented. This second alternative adds strength to the generator (preventing failures) and permits an analysis of the first phase. This is “creative generation” through a technique of data comparison (to be done in the second phase of the project, after the first evaluation of PaCo.) Navigation and Recognition System The level of sophistication and precision depends on the budget, but a rudimentary system for PaCo’s debut is made up of approach radars (like those in parking garages) to navigate randomly without collisions, and a system of image recognition. These senses are processed by a computer that makes the decisions and then sends the corresponding voltage to the motors. The PaCo web page (php) is divided into four sections: 1. PaCo’s “eye” –the webCam that lets you see what PaCo is seeing 2. Section for news 3. Section to enter words (into the dictionary) 4. Section for the database with some of the verse that PaCo has created |
|
