SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- In a rock pool filled with greenish water, a sea creature unfurls its tentacles as daylight dawns. "If you stick your hand in, it startles," says MIT Media Lab researcher Josh Strickon. And so it does, hissing and pulling its silicone-clad body away when a hand is waved nearby.
In their explorations of artificial life, Strickon and other Media Lab researchers have created what they call "Public Anemone," a sea creature that responds to stimuli like touch, motion and light. Near the tentacle creature are clumps of fiber optic wires that pull in if you touch them, just like an ordinary sea anemone.
Is this good artificial intelligence or good programming? "Is there a difference?" responds Scott Senften, chair of Siggraph's Emerging Technologies Exhibition.
This year's exhibition was a meditation on human-machine interaction, as researchers from around the world demonstrated three kinds of projects: robots, machines that enhanced one or more of the five senses, and explorations of virtual reality.
In the robot category, attendees experienced "Lewis, the Robotic Photographer," a more normal-looking robot of metal and wheels whose raison d'etre is to move toward nearby people and take pictures of them.
This isn't as simple as it sounds. To get its pictures, Lewis' video camera must detect skin tones, determine that they represent a face, center one or more faces in its digital camera's lens, and snap the picture.
The point, says Bill Smart of Washington University in St. Louis, isn't how well the robot works, but how well it doesn't. While Lewis appeared to snap passable digital photos just fine in one walk-through, it didn't work at all earlier in the week when electricity levels in the exhibition dropped somewhat.
"A lot of college students think that because they can write great code, they understand all about computers," Smart said. "A robot is just a computer on wheels. But the real world is very unpredictable. That's what Lewis gets across."
Augmented reality was another hot topic at the exhibition. "SmartFinger," from the Japan Science and Technology Corp., is a nail chip that sits on the end of a finger and sends sensations to the skin when the finger runs over printed words and diagrams. The researchers see applications for the visually impaired.
The "Sonar Flashlight" from Carnegie Mellon University is a deceptively simple spin on medical ultrasound devices. Through a system of mirrors and lenses, an image of the organ being imaged is projected directly in the path of the flashlight's sonar beam, rather than on a monitor several feet away.
That means a doctor viewing a baby in the womb will see the image in space exactly where the baby actually is. In theory, this could make manipulations or caesarians much less tricky. Extensive medical testing remains to be done.
The Media Lab's "Interactive Window" -– an ordinary sheet of glass hooked up with sensors -- responded to taps and knocks by sending images skittering across the glass. Researchers see applications that range from consumers knocking on retail-store windows to view products to museum visitors knocking on display cases to hear an exhibit's story.
Augmented reality in museums was also the theme behind a projection system from Austria that gave 3-D goggle-wearers the impression that the dinosaur skull in the glass case in front of them suddenly developed musculature and skin.
The exhibition's most popular stop –- so popular that would-be participants in the study had to book spots days in advance -– was a study of how humans react physiologically to extreme virtual environments.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina and other universities used head-mounted displays, earphones and other equipment to give participants the illusion that they were walking and picking up items in a house. Then they asked each participant to walk into a new "room" to the edge of an apparent 20-foot hole and to drop a virtual ball in it.
To maximize the effect, they created a 1-inch platform in front of the hole (actually, just the floor) that gave the impression that there was indeed a big drop.
The researchers measured differences in heartbeat and sweating among many participants leaning over the hole. Some people experienced pure panic. "A few people with severe fear of heights couldn't even step in the room," said North Carolina professor Mary Whitton.
