Entertainment Technology Center
Overview
At Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), students draw on every bit of their imaginations as they develop interactive video games, robots and virtual worlds. Co-founded by Don Marinelli and the late Randy Pausch, who became famous for a life-affirming online lecture and book titled The Last Lecture, the ETC tour showcases the dreams brought to life by artists and technologists. While there, walk into a world that includes chats with a Ben Franklin simulation and Quasi, an animatronic robot, or linger on a starship’s deck and meet some of tomorrow’s innovators who want to entertain, inform, and inspire.
Highlights:
- ETC project courses emphasize making real things that work. "Building Virtual Worlds," a course started by Randy Pausch, is one such example. Teams of artists and technologist attack a joint project using unique platforms such as the Head-Mounted Display and Trackers, the Jam-O-Drum, the TrackBox, the Playmotion, and camera-based audience interaction techniques.
- “Ben Franklin’s Ghost” is a virtual Benjamin Franklin with whom people can interact. Guests who wish to speak with Franklin’s ghost can find it floating on a large screen above a table, which holds a book containing questions about his life. Visitors may touch the questions that interest them or type in other ones while Franklin answers in real time. The technology enabling this exchange is called a Synthetic Interview, which was invented and patented by Scott Stevens, a senior systems scientist in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, and Michael Christel, senior systems scientist in the Computer Science Department. Franklin’s Ghost was created by Jessica Trybus, ETC's director of edutainment.
- Quasi, an animatronic robot created by a team of students, loves charming campus visitors. The first robot created through Carnegie Mellon’s Interbots Initiative, Quasi typically resides at the ETC, where he talks with people, entertains them, and offers directions. Lately, however, his popularity has been keeping him on the road with other appearances including “Good Morning America,” “Live with Regis and Kelly” and ESPN’s Super Bowl XLI. Quasi is a child-like humanoid robot around two feet tall and has two antennae that mimic the movement of dog-ears. His expressive eyes and antennae can change color, and together they allow him to convey a wide variety of emotions. A pinhole camera in his nose allows him to direct his gaze at the humans in front of him.
Contact: Byron Spice, 412-268-9068, bspice@cs.cmu.edu; Eric Sloss, 412-268-5765, ecs@andrew.cmu.edu