Who is HERB?
HERB stands for Home Exploring Robot Butler. HERBS serves as the research platform of the Personal Robotics Lab, which is directed by Siddhartha Srinivasa, associate professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute.
HERB is a testbed for algorithms, software and other technology that will enable robots to perform challenging manipulation tasks in places where people live and work. HERB works on behalf of the Quality of Life Technology (QoLT) Center, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center dedicated to applying robotic and information technologies to the everyday lives of people.
QoLT Center is jointly operated by Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.
What is Bowtie?
Bowtie is a semester project at the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center that is helping fulfill HERB’s (Home Exploring Robotic Butler) dream of becoming an actor. Bowtie is designing expressful animations and a flexible and robust interface that enables his operators to manipulate various parameters of HERB’s movement in real time to improvise and fine-tune his performance. Bowtie is working closely with director Sam French to realize his directorial vision by iteratively improving HERB’s interface in the months leading up to the performance.
Bowtie high end goal is to research and create a thought framework for the design and implementation of expressive animations for robots, which can highly improve the interaction between robots and humans. In a near future many tasks will be performed by robots and Bowtie goal is to set some a ground for the future research of systems that will enable those interactions.
