iCatPhilips presents intuitive iCat concept
iCat iCat is a research platform for studying human-robot interaction topics. The robot is 38 cm tall and is equipped with 13 servos that control different parts of the face, such as the eyebrows, eyes, eyelids, mouth and head position. With this setup iCat can generate many different facial expressions - happy, surprise, angry, sad - that are needed to create social human-robot interaction dialogues. A camera installed in iCat's head can be used for different computer vision capabilities, such as recognizing objects and faces. Each foot contains a microphone to record sounds, perform speech recognition and to determine the direction of the sound source. A speaker and soundcard are installed to play sounds and speech. Finally, touch sensors and multi-colour LEDs are installed in the feet and ears to sense whether the user touches the robot and to communicate further information encoded by coloured light. For instance, the operation mode of the iCat (e.g. sleeping, awake, busy, listening) can be encoded by the colour of the LEDs in the ears.
Philips presents intuitive iCat concept for the home Human-like user-interface for easy access to your digital world Amsterdam, 9 Dec 2004 - On the occasion of the visit of Premier Wen Jia Bao to the global headquarters of Royal Philips Electronics, a new consumer product prototype was demonstrated. The Chinese delegation met 'iCat', a user-interface that provides natural human-like interaction to help you in your daily tasks such as sending messages, accessing daily information, selecting your favorite music, photos and video or even guarding your home. The iCat prototype that is currently tested by people in the Philips Research HomeLab, serves to demonstrate the capabilities of a future consumer product called 'Smart Companion' that will act as a companion in the home and provides an easy to use interface to the digital world, similar to the well known mouse as interface to the PC. iCat's interaction style is modeled after communication between humans. By employing advanced technologies such as speech recognition, computer vision, robotics and animatronics, iCat exhibits a true 'personality'. It interacts with the user in a natural way by understanding spoken requests, giving replies, recognizing faces or everyday objects and by using body language such as facial expressions, nodding and other head movements. This makes it fun to interact with iCat and more than just a device controller, iCat becomes a true companion that assists the user and joins user's experiences. iCat is connected via USB to a standard PC for processing power and storage capacity. Its intelligence is made possible by an advanced software architecture. iCat's autonomous behavior is driven by a set of internally simulated motivations and emotions, while its deliberation engine reasons about users, their activities and connected devices in the home. iCat can playback audio, photo and video content from multiple sources such as PCs, Internet or other storage devices. Furthermore, the broadband Internet connection can be used for all kind of possible future consumer services such as messaging, information retrieval, remote monitoring or home surveillance. Philips Research is extending her work on user-interface robots and is building a research community together with universities and research laboratories on this topic. The HomeLab is the best location to actually work with people and technologies to register and understand preferences and market opportunities.
Philips iCat Contact Information Philips Research Prof. Holstlaan 4 Eindhoven NL-5656 AA Netherlands Tel.: +31 40 2743440 Fax: +31 40 2745033 iCat flyer Web site
