Talk:Feelix Growing

Some further references

First things first: Dr Lola Cañamero of the University of Hertfordshire, who is running this project, is my partner - so, as advised by Delldot, I won't edit this article itself, so as to avoid conflict of interest issues; I'll restrict anything I say on the topic to this Talk page. But for anyone who does want to edit it, and wants a bit of source material, here are some references - I'll update if I hear of any more, unless anyone objects.

• Robo-doc’s on call today in The Times mentions Dr Cañamero and the project, but does not give the project's name! It is the same project as the BBC article, as can be seen by cross-referencing the name of the coordinator, the number of people and countries involved, and the budget, but I can imagine that the lack of an explicit mention of the project's name might make this article worthless from the viewpoint of this encyclopedia. Just in case, here are some salient facts from that article not in the WP article as of this writing:
  • The robots are intended to not only recognise the emotions of humans, but to operate more effectively (affectively? ;-) by having their own. "Emotions foster adaptation to environment, so robots would be better at learning things. For example, anything that damages the body would be painful, so a robot would learn not to do it again," says Dr Cañamero.
  • The specific cues they intend to use to track humans' behaviour are physical - specifically, facial expressions and posture.
  • The project is hoping to produce something can could be used in hospitals and in homes within 3.5 years.

• ¿Qué sienten las máquinas? in El Pais. Relevant points (as far as my dodgy Spanish will take me, I will double-check with Dr Cañamero to make sure I got this right):
  • An important focus in the project is on spotting those emotional cues that universal to people, rather than those specific to individuals and cultures.
  • Going back to important cues as to a person's emotional state, Dr Cañamero mentions the distance from the robot, the speed that they're walking, the way they move their arms, the position of the body and of the head, and, of course, facial expressions.
  • One area they will not be focusing on is language recognition - the voice is important to them just for the tone and the emotional content that comes through that.
  • They're hoping to create a feedback loop, with robots recognising emotion and then feeling emotions that are recognised by the humans they are with, who in turn respond with emotions, and so on - thus creating a natural interation between the two. (I think this is also mentioned in the BBC article.)

A couple of other things from the original BBC article that I think might be worth bringing out:

• The project aims mostly to use off-the-shelf hardware, and focus on the software side of things; the only hardware they currently expect to be building is "expressive heads" (that is, artificial faces).
• There's a strong developmental aspect to the project; each robot will be designed to learn how to recognise and respond to emotional cues over time.
• Funding is from the European Union.

Thanks for reading!

Gpjt 01:21, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Awesome. I made some of the changes, what do you think? A couple questions and comments:

• per the guideline suggesting avoiding statements that date quickly, I didn't want to use "within 3 1/2 years", so I used "by the project's end". It would be more specific to use amount of time from project's beginning to its end: when did the project begin and how long was it originally scheduled to last? With that info it could read "x years after the beginning of the project".
• It would be good if we could find an English translation of the Spanish article, for better verifiability (though I happen to speak pretty good spanish, so I was able to check the info).
• When they publish, it would be good to be able to link to their abstracts.
• What would be really sweet would be to have an informative picture, like of some of the robots in the project, of the lab, or maybe of some of the project participants (especially if they're working on something related to the project). Like the one the BBC article has, with the little robots all trailing after the person. But we can only use material if it's free to use under the GFDL, meaning more or less that anyone can use it for any purpose. If your partner has any pictures she owns the copyright of (i.e. she created) she'd like to release into the public domain or GFDL, that would be amazing. She'd need to upload it following the directions at Special:Upload, I can help as necessary.
• We need to link to this article from other, related articles so it's not an orphan. Can you think of related topics that would be appropriate to link to this one? Like similar projects, for example.

By the way, Gpjt, you or your partner can still make minor changes to the article like corrections of spelling, grammar, or formatting. Thanks for the great sources and contributions! delldot talk 04:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Delldot, many thanks for the text, and sorry it's taken so long for me to reply! I have a one more reference:

• CORDIS, the EU's Community Research & Development Information Service, have an article. It mentions an international perspective I'd missed in the previous articles:

Understanding these cultural differences in the acceptance of robots is an important part of the project, and to this end the FEELIX GROWING partners will work closely with scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and the Communications Research Laboratory in Japan.

On the other things you mentioned...

Re: the project's end - it ends in May 2010 (as per their website), perhaps that could go there? (BTW if it's OK for me to make simple changes like that, I'm happy to do so!)

Re: the abstracts of the research; when they publish it, it will be linkable from their webpage, under "Publications" - someone from the project should be able to post something here when they do that.

One bit of bad news, apparently the image that I had would have been OK for non-commercial use, but not for commercial, which rules it out for Wikipedia :-(. I'll see if they have anything else that could be used.

Cheers, Gpjt 01:16, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

See also section

By the way, I just added a see also section, do you think the links in it are apropos? I was basicaly just like, "uh... this looks good!" Please suggest ones to add or remove. (or, for folks not involved in the project, be bold!) delldot talk 04:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Delldot - those look great, here are a few more (happy to add this kind of thing myself, but am holding back in case it would be a conflict of interest :-):

• Another EU developmental robotics project is on WP: RobotCub Consortium
• Biologically-inspired computing is a great overall category for the kind of thing they're doing.
• Lola tells me that they will be using the Facial Action Coding System in the project, which would be a great "See also" item, and perhaps also a good place for an incoming link - but it's not mentioned on their site. Am I right in my assumption that this can only be added to the article once they're published something elsewhere making the connection referenceable (under the "No original research" rule)?

A couple of external links, not sure if they would be useful:

• The HUMAINE Network of Excellence is another EU-funded project investigating a very broad range of models, techniques, etc., in different aspects of emotion-oriented computer and robotic systems that have to interact with humans.
• The euCognition Network of Excellence also funded by the EU provides a framework where projects funded by the EU in their area of 'cognitive systems' (like Feelix Growing) can interact and make one another aware of their results, etc—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gpjt (talk • contribs)

Great, I will add these as soon as I get the chance. I think you're right to be careful about adding links. Thanks again for all the great material! delldot talk 15:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)