[Project] Robotic Dinosaurs

In 2010, KumoTek introduced the world’s first truly interactive robotic dinosaur experience at the historic Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. The robots attracted over 250,000 people during their six month run and have been an unprecedented success for the museum. The RoboSUE experience features a truly interactive robotic recreation of the famous “Sue” T-Rex and several other prehistoric reptilians that lock on to human faces and tracks visitors in real-time. The robots are controlled by KumoTek’s Human Interaction System which allows guests to experience what it would have been like to be stalked by life-sized dinosaurs.


Technology used in this project:
- Face Tracking
- Kinematic Motion Control
- Event Based Behavior Control


Face Tracking  is used for triggering the behavior of the dinosaurs. It will detect multiple faces and pick an active face and selects behavior based on the action of the person detected.
For example, if one person approaches to the dinosaur quickly enough to scare the dinosaur or make him angry, it will roar at the person while it's tracking.

To make the dinosaur looking at the visitor, "Inverse Kinematics" is used. Based on the face position given by the face-tracking, motion controller will calculate the angles for each joints and move the servo to the position.

The behavior of the dinosaurs are determined by the process manager based on order, priority, time interval, and etc... of the given triggers generated by face tracking, user interface, and network communication.

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