RoboThespian
RoboThespian is a robotic actor, meaning he's an actor who is a robot, as opposed to a bad actor who is human. It speaks more than 30 languages, and you can find it on stages worldwide.
- Creator
- Year
- 2011
- Country
- United Kingdom 🇬🇧
- Categories
- Features
Did you know?
A RoboThespian named Max Q answers space questions at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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History
RoboThespian was developed by Engineered Arts, a robotics company founded by Will Jackson and based in Cornwall, England. Designed as a "robot actor," RoboThespian was the first in a series of entertainment humanoids developed by the company over nearly 20 years. The robot features a range of expressive movements, speech, and sounds that can be animated in advance or in real time. In 2015, RoboThespian performed alongside two humans in a play called "The Uncanny Valley," which made its New York City premiere at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
Specs
- Overview
Equipped with text-to-speech engine and male and female voices. Programmable via graphical interface or API. Scripted and teleoperation modes.
- Status
Inactive
- Year
2011
- Website
- Width
- 41 cm
- Height
- 175 cm
- Length
- 30 cm
- Weight
- 33 kg
- Sensors
Cameras and infrared depth sensors (for gesture and pose recognition).
- Actuators
Festo pneumatic actuators and brushed DC motors.
- Degrees of Freedom (DoF)
- 26
- Materials
Aluminum alloy and plastics.
- Compute
Single board computer with Intel dual-core CPU, two Marvell Xscale PXA270 CPUs, and five Parallax Propeller P8X32A microcontrollers. External control unit: Intel Core i7 computer.
- Software
Gentoo and Ubuntu Linux OS. Custom core software, OpenNI, and Python scripts.
- Power
24-V DC power supply and air compressor
- Cost
- $88,000 (standard model)
