Nadine is a gynoid humanoid social robot that is modelled on Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann. The robot has a strong human-likeness with a natural-looking skin and hair and realistic hands. Nadine is a socially intelligent robot which returns a greeting, makes eye contact, and can remember all the conversations had with it. It is able to answer questions autonomously in several languages, simulate emotions both in gestures and facially, depending on the content of the interaction with the user. Nadine can recognise persons it has previously seen, and engage in flowing conversation.J Ren, X Jiang and J Yuan, Quantized Fuzzy LBP for Face Recognition, 40th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) 2015, Brisbane, Australia, 2015 Nadine has been programmed with a "personality", in that its demeanour can change according to what is said to it.Kochanowicz J, A. H. Tan and D. Thalmann, Modeling human-like non-rationality for social agents, Proceedings of the ACM 29th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2016), pp. 11-20, Geneva, Switzerland, May 23–25, 2016 Nadine has a total of 27 degrees of freedom for facial expressions and upper body movements. With persons it has previously encountered, it remembers facts and events related to each person.J. Zhang J, N. Magnenat Thalmann and J. Zheng, Combining Memory and Emotion With Dialog on Social Companion: A Review, Proceedings of the ACM 29th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2016), pp. 1-9, Geneva, Switzerland, May 23–25, 2016 It can assist people with special needs by reading stories, showing images, put on Skype sessions, send emails, and communicate with other members of the family.A. Beck, Z. Zhang and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Motion Control for Social Behaviors, Context Aware Human-Robot and Human-Agent Interaction, Springer International Publishing, 237-256, 2015Z.P. Bian, J. Hou, L.P. Chau and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Fall Detection Based on Body Part Tracking Using a Depth Camera, IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, Vol. 19, No. 2, Pp. 430-439, 2015J. Zhang, J. Zheng and N. Magnenat Thalmann, PCMD: personality‐characterized mood dynamics model toward personalized virtual characters, Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, Vol. 26, Issue 3-4, Pp. 237-245, 2015J. Zhang, J. Zheng and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Modeling Personality, Mood, and Emotions, Context Aware Human-Robot and Human-Agent Interaction, Springer International Publishing, 211-236, 2015 It can play the role of a receptionist in an office or be dedicated to be a personal coach.Y. Xiao, Z. Zhang, A. Beck, J. Yuan and D. Thalmann, Human-Robot Interaction by Understanding Upper Body Gestures, MIT Press Journals - Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Vol. 23, No. 2, Pp. 133-154, 2014Z. Yumak, J. Ren, N. Magnenat Thalmann, and J. Yuan, Modelling Multi-Party Interactions among Virtual Characters, Robots, and Humans, MIT Press Journals - Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, Vol. 23, No. 2, Pp. 172-190, 2014
Nadine interacted with more than 100,000 visitors at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore during the exhibition, "HUMAN+: The Future of our Species", that was held from May to October 2017. Nadine has worked as a customer service agent in AIA Insurance Company in Singapore. This is the first time in the world that a humanoid robot is used as a customer service agent.
History Nadine is a next-generation humanoid robot that is a successor from Eva,Social Robotics a humanoid robot head manufactured by Hanson Robotics in 2008. Eva's software platform was developed at MIRALab,MIRALab University of Geneva. Eva's head shows very realistic moods and emotionsC. Cig, Z. Kasap, A. Egges and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Realistic Emotional Gaze and Head Behavior Generation Based on Arousal and Dominance Factors, The 3rd International Conference on Motion in Games 2010, Springer, 2010 and short term memory.Z. Kasap and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Building long-term relationships with virtual and robotic characters: the role of remembering, The Visual Computer (IF: 1.073), vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 87-97, January 2012Z. Kasap, M. Ben Moussa, P. Chaudhuri and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Making Them Remember—Emotional Virtual Characters with Memory, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (IF: 1.116), vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 20-29, March 2009 Eva has also performed in a play in the Roten Fabrik Theatre at Zurich.The robot EVA playing in the Roten Fabrik theatre in Zurich
Nadine has been created in 2013 by Kokoro, Japan and has been modelled after Professor Nadia Magnenat Thalmann. Nadine has a head and full body with a natural appearance. Nadine software platform which has been developed at the Institute for Media Innovation in Singapore's Nanyang Technological University is able to show emotions, speak naturally, understand some gestures, and remember and retrieve facts during dialogue sessions.ColdFusion, The Most Realistic Robots! (2018)J. Zhang J, N. Magnenat Thalmann and J. Zheng, Combining Memory and Emotion With Dialog on Social Companion: A Review, Proceedings of the ACM 29th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2016), pp. 1-9, Geneva, Switzerland, May 23–25, 2016 Nadine also interacts with arm movements. Ongoing research provides the social robot with two articulated hands and natural grasping.L. Tian, N. Magnenat Thalmann, D. Thalmann, J. Zheng, A methodology to model and simulate customized human robotic realistic hand, Proceedings of the 35th Computer Graphics International (CGI 2018), ACM, Bintan, Indonesia, June 11–14, 2018L. Tian, N. Magnenat Thalmann, D. Thalmann, J. Zheng, The Making of a 3D-Printed, Cable-Driven, Single-Model, Lightweight Humanoid Robotic Hand, Frontiers in Robotics and AI, DOI: 10.3389/frobt.2017.00065, pp. 65, December 04, 2017N. Magnenat Thalmann, L. Tian and F. Yao, Nadine: A Social Robot that Can Localize Objects and Grasp Them in a Human Way, Frontiers in Electronic Technologies, Springer, pp. 1-23, 2017H. Liang, J. Yuan, D. Thalmann and N. Magnenat Thalmann, AR in Hand: Egocentric Palm Pose Tracking and Gesture Recognition for Augmented Reality Applications, ACM Multimedia Conference 2015 (ACMMM 2015), Brisbane, Australia, 2015 Nadine is also linked to all kinds of databases such as its personal dataset, Wikipedia, weather channels, and many others.
Platform Nadine (social robot) is built with a classic perception – processing/decision – interaction layer framework. The design of Nadine platform with objectives of maintaining human-like natural conduct even in complex situations, be generic to handle any kind of data and place of operation, multi-lingual support etc.
Nadine's functionalities are based on her understanding of environment and perception of users/people in front of her. Nadine's perception layer is focused on this task. Nadine uses a 3D depth cameras, webcam and microphone to pick up vision and audio inputs from her environment and users. Perception layer is composed of independent sub-modules that operate on different input streams of the above-mentioned devices to recognize faces,J. Ren, X. Jiang, and J. Yuan, Face and Facial Expressions Recognition and Analysis, Context Aware Human-Robot and Human-Agent Interaction, Springer International Publishing, 3-29, 2015 emotions, gestures,L. Ge, H. Liang, J. Yuan and D. Thalmann, Robust 3D Hand Pose Estimation in Single Depth Images: from Single-View CNN to Multi-View CNNs, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 24 June 2016Q. Ke, M. Bennamoun, S. An, F. Sohel and F. Boussaid, A New Representation of Skeleton Sequences for 3D Action Recognition, CVPR 2017 user location, intention, comportment etc. and other environmental attributes such as object recognition,Z. Fang, J. Yuan and N. Magnenat Thalmann, Understanding Human-Object Interaction in RGB-D videos for Human Robot Interaction, Proceedings of the 35th Computer Graphics International (CGI 2018), ACM, Indonesia, June 11–14, 2018J. Redmon and A. Farhadi, YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger, arXiv preprint, 2017 location etc.
The processing layer functions as Nadine's brain that uses the perception outputs to gauge the situation and decide on how to act according to it. The main component of this layer is a behavior tree planner, Nadine's central processing unit allows to process all perceived inputs. Based on the inputs received from perception layer, the behavior tree planner updates the other sub-modules of processing layer, which include processing dialog between user and Nadine, affective system and memories of her interaction. To process dialog, generic chatbotsR.S Wallace, The Anatomy of A.L.I.C.E., In Parsing the Turing Test (pp. 181-210). Springer, Dordrecht, 2009Chatterbot have been built to handle different situations and questions. An online search based on Google Assistant is also integrated to answer questions outside the trained corpus. Based on the user's speech, emotion and Nadine's current emotion, Nadine can exhibit different human motion to user. Nadine's memory modelJ. Zhang, J. Zheng and N. Magnenat Thalmann, MCAEM: Mixed-Correlation-Analysis based Episodic Memory for Companion-User Interactions, The Visual Computer, DOI: 10.1007/s00371-018-1537-3, Vol 34, Issue 6-8, pp. 1129-1141, May 10, 2018 also allows her to remember specific facts about the user and context of current conversation in order to provide appropriate responses. Upon understanding the user interaction and environment context, an appropriate verbal or non-verbal response is decided. For this purpose, Nadine's processing layer maps each perception layer stimuli to an activation and threshold. Based on the processing of each stimulus by each sub-module, the activation levels are varied. When thresholds are reached, each winning action is passed on to interaction layer to show the various responses in Nadine.
The interaction layer or Nadine controller is responsible for executing each of the responses received from processing layer to show it in Nadine's face or gesture. For example, based on user location modify Nadine's head to maintain eye gaze with user. Apart from this, the interaction layer is also responsible for controlling her motors to show different gestures and facial expressions. For verbal responses, it includes a speech synthesizer and lip societyion module. Based on the verbal response, corresponding phonemes and visemes are generated. The speech synthesizer also takes into account the tone of dialog (to show various emotions) while generating speech. The lorgahronization converts the visemes into corresponding facial motor position to move Nadine's lips according to her speech. Currently, Nadine can support six languages including English, German, French, Chinese, Hindi and Japanese.
Events Nadine has participated in live demos on stage and engaged with people from all walks of life. Proclaimed as one of the world's most realistic humanoid robot, Nadine made her first public appearance as a key highlight at the “Human+: The Future of Our Species” exhibition held in Singapore's ArtScience Museum.
She has interacted with many people from corporate companies across various industries such as Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), Credit SuisseCredit Suisse Global Megatrends Conference 2018 and Deutsche Bank.9th Annual deAccess Asia 2018 Conference Highlights
Nadine also interacted with Prime Minister of India, His Excellency Narendra Modi during his historic visit to NTU Singapore, on 1 June 2018, which was one of the innovations he took special interest in.PM Modi Interacts With Robot In Nanyang Tech University In Singapore