A few days before the Review:
Less than 24 hours to go …
The Final (Review) countdown
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Guarded tour
At five in the afternoon the Royal Alcázar closes its gates for new visitors for the day. The shop closes and the FROG makes its last tour of the day. This is a quiet time to test the latest updates and enhancements.
The security guards make their way from the entrance through the Alcázar making sure that everyone can find the exit. And sometimes, as on this day, they stop to watch the FROG for a moment.
The UT Team
Vanessa Evers is coordinator of the FROG project on behalf of UvA. She is chair of the Human Media Interaction (HMI) group at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
Betsy van Dijk was with the project until she became ill in 2013. Betsy is recovering: the FROG team misses her.
Daphne Karreman is working on the development of personality and behavior of a Fun Robotic Outdoor Guide. In her free time she plays the cello and is learning to build violins.
Randy Klaassen is finishing his thesis on Health Behaviour Change Support Systems which he will be defending on 27 February 2015.
Jan Kolkmeier is doing his Master’s with HMI.
Randy and Jan joined the project with just five months to come up with a working solution for the FROG state machine, augmented reality and personality.
Lynn Packwood – day-to-day project manager for FROG – usually only to be seen as a shadow or in a Tilley hat – and author of this blog.
Is FROG afraid of the dark?
UPO and UT have been working till dark this weekend, preparing for the coming EU review.
They went to collect FROG from the shop at the end of the day but FROG wouldn’t move. The lady was ready to close the shop, the lights had been turned off and Randy took an excellent photo that I have gratefully ‘borrowed’ *.
Is FROG afraid of the dark? We shone flashlights onto the docking poster – and, sure enough, FROG started to move. Not exactly afraid of the dark … but it sounds better than ‘FROG couldn’t see his ArUco poster’.
*Thanks, Randy!
Pomegranates or ‘granadas’
There are pomegranates everywhere in the Royal Alcázar in Seville: in pots, in the gardens, on tiles and on tapestries.
In the Vault room the FROG robot stops for a short interactive quiz with the visitors. The answer to one of the questions should actually be ‘pomegranates’ …
Today, Javier told us that the pommegranate is the heraldic device for Granada. This device is seen in two parties of the shield on the tile above.
This close-up of the photo at the top shows a tiny pommegranate in the same stage – bursting open to reveal its seeds.
And here you can see the same thing on another tile picture.
Here the fruits look perfect.
The fruit seen below is on a larger plant in the gardens.
This might just be one as well – it is on a tile set into a path in the gardens.
By the way, we didn’t change the answer to the quiz question – so, I’m afraid this post won’t help you get it right.
The UvA Team
In the FROG project, partner UVA, that is, the University of Amsterdam, is working on people detection, tracking and body pose recognition. Dariu Gavrila is the team leader.
Final Review in Seville
The FROG consortium will be at the Royal Alcázar in Seville from 17 till 21 November 2014.
We have been busy finishing our reports and now the EU representative and two independent reviewers (both researchers with a lot of experience with robots) will come to see if we have done our work properly.
This is a very serious event – somewhere between a tough audit and an excellent masterclass for the researchers.
FROG will be put through its paces … Looking for interested visitors!
Blueprint for the Future
On Monday 13 October 2014 the Dutch Night of Science and Society took place (Avond van Wetenschap en Maatschappij; www.avondwenm.nl) in the Ridderzaal in the Hague.
During this yearly event scientists and non-scientists from different fields discussed topics with each other on the theme Blueprint for the future – the science of today is the world of tomorrow. One of the topics was the introduction of social robots. Prof. Peter-Paul Verbeek introduced the topic of social robots in society to the table and Daphne Karreman supported the discussions with examples taken from the FROG project.
FROG on youtube
A short video of the European Researchers’ Night in Seville can be seen at:
FROG on tweakers.net
FROG has appeared on tweakers.net a Dutch website featuring news and information about hardware, software and the Internet. Members of the UT team explained and demonstrated the various capabilities of the robot. You can find the clip (which is in Dutch) here: FROG on tweakers.net