Current Projects:

      The Huggable (January 2005 - present):

                Description: The Huggable combines research currently being done in the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab on sensate skins and novel actuators into a portable robotic platform with the goal of relational, affective touch. The Huggable will feature a dense sensor network of different modalities of somatic sensation to detect the affective content of touch. The Huggable will have silent, smooth, back-drivable motion. These features combined with a behavior system and other sensors will allow the Huggable to relate to the person through touch - much like a pet does. For example, the Huggable will be able to nuzzle into a person's arm using these systems.  This work is funded in part by a Microsoft iCampus Grant.

                My Role:  The Huggable is the subject of my Doctoral thesis.  As such I have been working with a team of undergraduates and another graduate student on the design of the robot.  In addition to acting as project manager, I am designing the full body "sensitive skin" for the robot to allow to the robot to not only respond when it is touched but determine the affective content of that touch, such as being "petted" or "tickled," and to respond appropriately.  At left is a section of the arm showing the technology behind the sensitive skin.  The white sensors are QTC force sensors.  The silver circles above the surface of the circuit boards are the temperature sensors.  Not shown is the capacitive sensing electrodes.  Much more information about the design of this skin can be found in the papers and websites below.

                My Publications:  W. D. Stiehl (2005), Sensitive Skins and Somatic Processing for Affective and Sociable Robots Based Upon as Somatic Alphabet Approach. Master of Science thesis, Media Arts and Sciences, MIT.

                        W. D. Stiehl, J. Lieberman, C. Breazeal, L. Basel, R. Cooper, H. Knight, L. Lalla, A. Maymin, and S. Purchase (2006), "The Huggable: A Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational, Affective Touch." presented at IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, Las Vegas, NV, 2006.

                        W. D. Stiehl, J. Lieberman, C. Breazeal, L. Basel, L. Lalla, and M. Wolf (2005), "The Design of the Huggable: A Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational, Affective Touch." presented at AAAI Fall Symposium on Caring Machines: AI in Eldercare, Washington, D.C., 2005.

                        W. D. Stiehl and C. Breazeal (2005), "Affective Touch for Robotic Companions." Proceedings of the 2005 First International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII 2005), LNCS 3784, pp. 747-754 Beijing, China, 2005. (Paper also available from Springer-Verlag)

                        W. D. Stiehl, J. Lieberman, C. Breazeal, L. Basel, L. Lalla, and M. Wolf (2005), "Design of a Therapeutic Robotic Companion for Relational, Affective Touch." presented at IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2005), pp. 408-415, Nashville, TN, 2005.

                Exhibitions:  Technology Demonstration at the IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC 2006), Las Vegas, Nevada,
                                            January 9th -10th, 2006

                                      Technology Demonstration at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Conference Center, Redmond, Washington, July 19th, 2005

                Links:  Main Project Website

                            Microsoft iCampus Grant Project Website

      Leonardo (Fall 2002 - present):

                Description: This project is a collaboration with the world famous Stan Winston Studio. It combines the studio's artistry and expertise in creating compelling animatronic characters with state of the art research in socially intelligent robots. We have christened this new character collaboration with a name that embodies art, science and invention. Hence, the name "Leonardo" -- namesake of Leonardo DaVinci, the Renaissance scientist, inventor and artist. Indeed, Leonardo is the Stradivarius of expressive robots. It is our challenge to give Leonardo a computational brain that is worthy of its body.

                My Role:  I have been assisting the talented engineers at Stan Winston Studios during the initial building of Leonardo as well as during mechanical revisions at the Studio in California.  This time at the Studio has been valuable as it allowed for me to understand their original design so I can maintain and repair the robot back at MIT.  In addition I was able to learn new techniques of fabrication, some of which were employed during the design and fabrication of the Public Anemone project below.  In addition to helping with mechanical repairs of the robot while at MIT, I also have been working on the design of a "sensitive skin" for Leonardo to allow him both to touch and interact with objects in his world as well as to respond to people who touch the robot.  Currently, as part of my Master's Thesis I have designed a set of "sensitive hands," shown in the figure at left, which have a total of 40 Interlink FSRs and a processing circuit board inside the hand.  Much more information about this project can be found at the project website or in the papers below.

                My Publications:  W. D. Stiehl (2005), Sensitive Skins and Somatic Processing for Affective and Sociable Robots Based Upon as Somatic Alphabet Approach. Master of Science thesis, Media Arts and Sciences, MIT.

                        W. D. Stiehl, L. Lalla, and C. Breazeal (2004). "Applying a Somatic Alphabet Approach to Inferring Orientation, Motion and Direction in Clusters of Force Sensing Resistors." Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS04), Sendai, Japan.

                        W. D. Stiehl, L. Lalla, and C. Breazeal (2004). "A Somatic Alphabet Approach to Sensitive Skin for Robots." Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2004), pp. 2865—2870, New Orleans, LA.

                        W. D. Stiehl (2003), Tactile Perception in Robots: From the Somatic Alphabet to the Realization of a Fully "Sensitive Skin." Bachelor of Science thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT.

                Links:  Project Website

Archived Projects:

      Public Anemone (January 2002 - August 2002):

                Description: In August of 2002, we debuted our Public Anemone installation at the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technology Exhibit.  This exhibit combined several core technologies: Integrated show controls that turn the terrarium into an intelligent stage; interactive, autonomous robot performers with natural and expressive motion that combines techniques from animation and robot control; and real-time, stereo vision that tracks multiple features on multiple people. Together, these elements create a physically interactive, ever changing, multi-sensory experience (including, sight, sound, touch, and even smell). The performance follows a storyline where certain elements occur each time, yet audience participation allows the experience to be different every time.

                My Role:  I was responsible for the silicone skin of the anemone robot as well as the lead designer of the Terrarium environment, shown in the photo.  The installation was massive in scale - 7ft wide x 7ft deep x 10 ft high and had to be designed to be shipped from MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts to San Antonio, TX for SIGGRAPH and be built quickly onsite.  Everything in the environment was created from scratch.  The rockwork was fiberglass over foam and chicken wire on plywood boards which were bolted to a Unistrut understucture.  The crystals were sculpted, molded, and cast.  Even the rock that the anemone "sleeps" on during the nocturnal cycle was custom made out of soft foam to prevent damage to the robot.  Much more specific information about the project as well as video can be found on the project website at the link below.

                My Publications:  C. Breazeal, A. Brooks, J. Gray, M. Hancher, C. Kidd, J. McBean, W.D. Stiehl, and J. Strickon (2003), "Interactive Robot Theatre", In Proceedings of IROS 2003.

                        C. Breazeal, A. Brooks, M. Hancher, C. Kidd, J. McBean, D. Stiehl, and J. Strickon (2002), "Public Anemone: An Organic Robot Creature", In SIGGRAPH 2002 Conference Abstracts and Applications, p. 76, ACM Press, NY.

                        C. Breazeal, A. Brooks, J. Gray, M. Hancher, J. McBean, W. D. Stiehl, and J. Strickon (2003), "Interactive Robot Theatre", Communications of the ACM, 46(7), pp. 76-85.

                Exhibition:  SIGGRAPH 2002, San Antonio, Texas, August 2002

                                    Save the Robots Exhibition, The Ark Cultural Centre for Children, Filmbase, and the Digital Hub, Dublin, Ireland, June 22nd - September 30th,
                                            2005 (static exhibition of anemone mechanical robot with video from SIGGRAPH interaction)

                Links:  Project Website

       Water Creature (Fall 2001):

                Description:  This project was the first proposal for what would eventually be the Public Anemone project above.  In the original SIGGRAPH pitch the anemone robot would be inside a large aquarium filled with oil.  At the base of the aquarium would be a layer of glowing goo which the anemone could reach down and interact with.  Cameras would be used to allow the anemone robot to see people who came up to the sides of the tank to interact.  Also the anemone could detect if someone tapped the glass of the aquarium.  Because of concerns of maintaining such an exhibit during the week of demos at SIGGRAPH in San Antonio, we decided to replace the aquarium with the terrarium as seen in the Public Anemone project above.

                My Role:  As part of the development stages for the project, I created as series of 1/4 scale sculptures of the various creature concepts.  In addition, I did numerous tests to find the correct consistency of goo which would look alien as the anemone played in it.  Finally, once these concepts were complete I created the 1/4 mock-up shown in the photo at the left.  This image was used as part of our SIGGRAPH pitch.

     Rufus 2.0 (Spring 2001):

                Description: Rufus, is the group's first expansion into the realm of controlling physically based creatures (vs pixels) with its behavior and motor architecture. This new version of Rufus adds real-world sensing to include vision, audition, and other sensory inputs that will then be fed back into the Synthetic Characters behavior system for feedback and control.  This was an expansion upon an earlier class project.

                My Role:  This was the first animatronic character that I created while at the Media Lab.  It was done in a very quick time frame - less than 6 weeks.  Scott Eaton did the mechanical design and Rob Burke did the software system.  I was responsible for the silicone skin, which was created based upon a sculpt by Scott Eaton.  I also created the electronics used with Rufus.  In one eye of Rufus is an IR photo diode.  Each of the three items has IR emitters (the cat's collar, the eyes of the squeeze toy, and the dog bone) which send a specific ID to Rufus.  This allows him to respond appropriately based on the item that he "sees."  These tags also allowed state information to be sent as well, such as if the squeeze toy was pressed.  The desire to want to touch Rufus and interact with him in a physical way, such as one does with an animal was what started my research path on the design on "sensitive skins."

                Links:  Project Website

      sheep|dog: Trial by Eire (2000-2001):

                Description: In this installation you play the role of a shepherd who must herd a bunch of sheep with attitude through a course using Duncan H. Terrier (aka Duncan of Innisfree) as your sheepdog. Duncan, and the sheep are fully autonomous, although Duncan responds to voice commands such as "Bye", "Away", "Steady", "Down" and so forth. In fact, you can train Duncan to respond to any set of utterances in any accent because he is looking at the acoustic pattern, and not doing speech recognition per-ce. In any event, both the sheep and Duncan have a mind of their own. For example, if the sheep get frightened they may bolt or charge.

                Duncan was a Highland Terrier developed to explore a variety of issues ranging from spatial learning and object permanence to temporal representations for Synthetic Characters. He was also the first character developed using our C4 architecture. Duncan was featured in an interactive installation sheep|dog: trial by eire.

                My Role:  This was my first electronics project at the Media Lab.  I created a table top box which allowed the "clicks" from a clicker used in dog training to be detected by the computer, to allow for Duncan to be clicker trained.  I also created another interface called the surfboard which allowed for users to steer the virtual shepherd around the environment by leaning or standing on one corner of the surfboard.  The surfboard was made of two painted and finished wooden boards with an Interlink FSR strip placed on the left and top corners.  Rubber was used between the wooden boards.  The interlink FSRs were connected to the computer via a standard joystick interface.  Ultimately it was deemed too difficult to steer the shepherd in this whole body fashion while giving the vocal commands, so a tablet interface was used after the first exhibition at MediaLabEurope. 

                Exhibition:  Opening of the MediaLabEurope, Dublin, Ireland January 2000

                                    Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 '01), Los Angeles, CA, 2001

                Links:  Project Website

      Musical Trinkets (Spring 2000 - Summer 2000):

                Description: This project has developed a tag reader optimized for applications in human-computer interaction. It sweeps through a 50-300 kHz read frequency, flagging any magnetically-coupled resonators in that range. It is a minimally-complicated circuit, and is able to provide the center frequency, resonance width, and amplitude for each detected resonance over a serial line at 30 Hz continuous updates. The tags are easily fashioned, consisting only of an inductor and capacitor or magnetostrictor tag cut to appropriate length. We have written an engaging graphical/musical application to demonstrate the system using one coil, tagging over 11 different objects and tracking their proximity and state to launch or modify musical sounds and graphics. Furthermore, work on a six-coil version of this project is in progress in order to enable gathering of three-dimensional position and rotation information of tags.

                My Role:  This project was a great continuation for the work that I had done on sand:stone.  I created a new set of tags for this project such as the foot, the ghosts, and the eyeball show in the figure to the left.  I also both a portable and hard wood version of the table with embedded search coil shown in the photo.

                Exhibition:  SIGGRAPH 2000 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

                Links:  Project Website

      Emotional Stuffed Doll Toy Concept (January 2000):

                Description: This project was done for the Media Lab - Mattel Toy Design Workshop IAP class held during January of 2000.  As part of this workshop, each student was given 3 weeks to prototype a new toy concept and in the last week we demonstrated this toy to designers at Mattel in El Segundo, CA.  I had always been interested in letting children have freedom of play and allow them to be creative in there play patterns.  Thus I wanted to create a toy which did not have a pre-scripted play pattern, but rather allowed the child to make up his or her own story and have the character react appropriately.   The concept was that a child would have a set of "emotional" tags which he or she could place about there room or pin them to other toys.  These tags would transmit an "emotion" to the doll.  For example, a scary dragon would transmit "fear" or a friend of the doll would transmit "happiness."  When in range, the doll would read this information and respond appropriately such as shivering in fear or making happy noises.  The idea was that a child could tag the objects in there room and then play with the doll and comfort it if it was scared or interact with it in other ways.  Thus the emotional response of the doll would not change the play pattern or the story, but rather contribute to it.

                My Role:  This was my own design.  For this first prototype I focused on the emotion of fear since I figured that the ability to comfort the toy would be something that might appeal to toy designers.  I used a single IR which for the prototype case was large, but could be scaled down to much lower power and size.  For the doll I modified a commercial stuffed animal with a shake motor inside.  I placed a photodiode as well as an IR receiver hidden in the shirt of the doll, shown in the figure.  If the room was too dark, as detected by the photodiode, the doll would shake showing a scared response.  Likewise if the IR receiver came within range of the "fear" tag the doll would shiver as well.  As soon as the child hugged the doll it would trigger a switch causing it to stop.  Unfortunately with other projects on the horizon I was not able to add more tags and emotions to the project.          

      sand:stone (Fall 1999):

                Description: Sand:stone is a piece developed for the 7th Annual New York Digital Salon and subsequent installation in galleries across Europe. The physical installation is that of a box of sand with some stones in it. On a screen on the far side, there is a statue on a pedestal, reminiscent of Rodin's Thinker. The sound of wind blows by the desolate statue. As the participant moves the stones, a strain of music unfolds. The statue stretches and raises its arms in response to the movement of the stones. As different arrangements of stones are created, the statue takes on different feelings: a young man breathing a bracing wind, a lonesome traveler bowed down by rain, a farmer bending to embrace the earth, a tortured zealot being burned at the stake. Through this installation we hope to investigate how character may be conveyed through music, light, and camera.

                My Role:  As with the void* and Swamped! projects below, I again was responsible for integrating electronics previously designed by the Responsive Environments Group at the Media Lab with physical objects.  Because of the simplistic and artistic design for the interaction, it was important that the electronics would not distract from the interaction.  Working with Ari Benbasat, I created a large search coil and custom tags based upon their Swept RF Tagging System.  The search coil was embedded at the bottom of a large wooden sand box which I built.  The tags were placed inside real rocks, by first drilling a hole into the middle of the rock, placing the tag, and finally cosmetically finishing the rock with texture and paint to hide the presence of the tag.  It worked very well, as people kept looking for the video camera which they thought was being used.  No one thought the rocks themselves were "smart."

                Exhibition:  The 7th Annual New York Digital Salon, Visual Arts Museum, New York, NY November 8th -
                                               December 15th, 1999

                                    The 7th Annual New York Digital Salon, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain, January 3rd - February 10th

                My Publications:  Synthetic Characters Group (B. Tomlinson, M. Downie, A. Benbasat, J. Wahl, W. Stiehl, B. Blumberg). (1999), "sand:stone - Artist Statement." Leonardo Vol. 32, No. 5, pp. 462-463.

                Links: Project Website

      Hoggle Animatronic Head (Summer 1999):

                Description: This was my the animatronic mask I created as part of the Special FX Makeup class at the Make-Up Designory in Burbank, CA in the Summer of 1999.  Jim Henson and Walt Disney have been huge influences in my life, as they both combined artistic endeavors with engineering and creativity.  Thus, it was a natural choice to make my first animatronic mask as homage to Jim Henson's character of Hoggle from the movie Labyrinth, one of the first films I had seen as a child which got me interested in the world of Special Effects. 

                My Role:  This was my class project, so the entire project from start to finish was mine.  As shown in the video, Hoggle had 6 degrees of freedom - eyes left and right, eyes up and down, 2 eyebrows, and 2 smile cables in the corner of each mouth.  The mask is worn by a performer who is responsible for opening and closing the mouth.  Everything, except for the eyes was created custom.  The hair was hand punched strand by strand into the foam latex skin.  The teeth are made of dental acrylic.  Even the tongue was created out of foam latex.  Please contact me if you would like more specifics on how the Hoggle head was made.

                Links: Here is a Video: low res (6mb), high res ( mb)  (coming soon)

      (void*): A Cast of Characters (1999):

                Description: The installation, located in the Millennium Motel area of SIGGRAPH99, explores interactions between autonomous and directable characters in a virtual space, and users in the physical space. Through our "buns and forks" interface, users can communicate with the virtual characters in an ever-changing social environment. The group's aim is to build characters which come alive in the eyes, ears, and hands of the user -- in short, characters with minds of their own. By investing virtual characters with commonsense knowledge and letting their emotional states and personal motivations govern their actions, we can produce lifelike behavior which conveys feeling and intelligence.

                My Role: In the original SIGGRAPH video submitted, I had created some interfaces which did not make it into the final demo at SIGGRAPH.  I had modified an old record player to include reed switches to detect speed of rotation and a tagging system which allowed the specific record placed on the record player to be detected.  I also created the original buns and forks interface, which used real bread.  Needless to say over a week of SIGGRAPH demos real bread was not practical, so we used the fake buns shown in the video on the project website.  As with the Swamped! project, my role was of seamless integration  of another lab member's  (Ari Benbasat) electronic sensor systems.

                Exhibition:  SIGGRAPH 1999 in Los Angeles, California.

                My Publications:  B. Blumberg, B. Tomlinson, M. P. Johnson, S. Yoon, M. Downie, A. Benbasat, J. Wahl, D. Stiehl, D. Nain, J. Paradiso (1999), "(void*): A Cast of Characters", In SIGGRAPH 1999 Conference Abstracts and Applications, p. 169, ACM Press, NY.

                Links: Project Website

      Swamped! (Summer 1998):

                Description: Swamped! is an interactive experience in which instrumented plush toys are used as a tangible, iconic interface for directing autonomous animated characters. Each character has a distinct personality and decides in real time what it should do based on its perception of its environment, its motivational and emotional state, and input from its "conscience," the guest. By manipulating a stuffed animal corresponding to the character, the guest can influence how a given character acts and feels.

                For example, the guest could have the character wave at another character by waving its arm, make it squawk by squeezing it, or direct the character's attention by moving the stuffed animal's head. The characters incorporate a novel model of behavior and emotion, multi-target motion interpolation and new techniques for real time graphics. Automatic camera and lighting control help reveal the emotional content of each scene. 

                By combining research in autonomous character design, automatic camera control, tangible interfaces and action interpretation, Swamped! seeks to create an evocative and novel experience.

                My Role:  I designed and built 5 stuffed animal chickens as shown in the picture.  I was responsible for integrating the electronics designed by others in the group inside the stuffed animal so as to not detract from the experience.  This was my first project at the Media Lab with the Synthetic Characters Group which I started shortly after graduating High School. 

                Exhibition: SIGGRAPH 1998 in Orlando, Florida.

                Links: Project Website