Having a robot with eyes that move realistically is extremely important but then you have to choose the cameras and what the software will do with the things that your robots camera sees.
Your camera or stereo vision cameras don’t have to be installed directly in the eyeballs of your robot but they should be close so that your robot appears to be seeing from its eyes.
But once your robot is seeing then your software or whatever cloud software you are using must process the information.
We can look at some simple toys from the 1990s like the WowWee Robosapien which had cameras in its eyes and could recognize certain objects and if a person was close to it.
There was very little computerization and no real software involved in these creations by the creator Mark Tilden.
But today you will have the choice to make the software control the images coming from the camera in two ways.
- with your own software or software running within your robot
- – with cloud based computer vision software that you may have to pay for
Using cloud based software is easier if you want to achieve spectacular results.
An option that Engineered Arts uses is called “Visage” by the Swedish company Visage Technical AB.
With this software it can have your camera see things and it can tell certain things about the person or object that it is looking at.
In the Engineered Arts example, they have some robots in a public space like a museum and when the camera sees a person in front of them the robot can tell some things about the person like their approximate age, gender and the facial expression that they may be making like laughing or getting angry.
You can use the Open CV software which we discuss in more depth in our AI section.