Before I go on with Myon, the robot, I must mention something else. This was the first talk I had listened to with the help of and interpreter, so for the first five minutes I couldn’t really concentrate on the content, all I could think was how good the translation was. Timing was perfect, the way she used her voice and even translated his little jokes. I was really impressed and I think the interpreters deserve at least one paragraph in this blog.
Professor Hild seems slightly more nervous talking in the big hall, without his robot supporting him on stage. The robot was designed by Hild and his team for research purposes, and was therefore built with that in mind. In comparison to other robots of its size Myon is relatively cheap, thus allowing the team to take the robot outside the lab, making it accessible for students.
Myon is 1,25 meters tall and weighs only 15 kilograms. The principle of how it functions is relatively simple; you can learn more about it here:
Manfred Hild: Myon – Character facets of a humanoid robot — Part #1
What is so special about Myon?
Well, it doesn’t have one central system to run it; it has many LED lights; different indicators communicate the happening inside the robot to the outside while it’s being used.
For its modularity and the non-central system, Manfred Hild got inspired on holidays in Spain, looking at an insect with the stinger separated from the rest of the body while still working quite well. Another benefit of this system is that if one part stops working, no other part is affected by it.
The outside shell is made of black and white plastic that was actually 3D printed. Hild and his team were told that 3D printing was not suitbale for their purposes – but they tried and found it to be very convenient and relatively easy to make and change robot’s shell with the help of 3D printing. However, the design process of the robot’s appearance is comparable to any other design processes: visual references, look and feel, lots of pin board and so on.
Their intention was to create a robot that looks like a robot — and not like a human. Otherwise it is very likely to look scary and a little ‘frankenstainesque’, as the translator stated. Hild and his team wanted the robot to look friendly, cute, and also a little clumsy and awkward. Inspired by visual references from movies and comic books they decided to go for a bionic look. Myon looks like a robot, but definitely a nice looking one. People and children are not afraid of it, but rather intrigued and want to interact with it.
First the team named it Muyo, but apparently it is “some dirty word in some language”, Hild says, and then they changed it into Myon. They haven’t googled that name yet and it seems that they don’t really care.
Myon is not the kind of robot that would be particularly good at one certain thing, but rather average in many different tasks. Currently it’s being trained to act a role in the play ‘My Square Lady’ at Komische Oper Berlin. When they had the first meeting with the cast, one of the singers had a little tear on her jeans right on her knee. Since the robots camera reacts on skin colored impulses stronger than on other impulses, it kept looking at the tear and couldn’t really focus on other stuff. If it was a human being, it would seem a little strange, but since it’s a friendly looking robot, nobody really minded.
Prof. Dr. Manfred Hild
Head of Neurorobotics Reasearch Lab / Beuth University of Applied Science (Berlin)
Manfred Hild is Professor of Digital Systems at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Prior to that he held positions as Visiting Researcher at the SONY Computer Science Laboratory in Paris and as leader of the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory in Berlin. His main research fields are sensorimotor control, humanoid robotics, and the design of distributed systems.
Will Myon become an opera star?
The play ‘My Square Lady’ premiers on the 21st of June 2015 at Komische Oper Berlin. Judging by all I’ve seen and heard about Myon so far, I think it’s safe to say it’s worth seeing!
AB/GL
