Background:
The motion of active entities can be the 5th media, Motion Media, following four conventional media; text, audio, still image, video. A robot can be an input/output device of such Motion Media. By dealing with the Motion Media in a same way for the four conventional media constituting network contents, the significance of the Motion Media have been discussed. In order to rapidly and widely enlighten the concept of Motion Media, via a sales campaign of the ISDN service in 2000, NTT developed a first Motion Media device (Mail reading mouse) given to 10,000 lucky users.
Technology:
This robot can vividly read the mail text with the neck motion inspired by the emotional words inside the text. The developed technique embeds robot control signals in an audio stream with modulation technique. This method can be explained as the usage of an audio medium as a carrier to convey control data. By taking advantage of this audio-based control technology, some other applications such as a game or a motion editor have been released in a dedicated internet site to foster such Motion Media contents.
The developed technology has created an opportunity to discuss the new value of the robot from the point of the view of information network, and also has shown the novel and practical idea to facilitate the sharing the Motion Media contents via audio.
12th RSJ Technical Innovations Award in 2007.
