“As a community, we’ve started to realize that it’s important to study human-robot interaction in public environments. “In today’s world, you can imagine that robots will be out there - some already are, with Roombas and robots in some factories and warehouses,” said Vazquez. Photography seemed to Vazquez an ideal intersection to study human-machine interactions in general - which is all part of the overall mission in Vazquez’s laboratory. ![]() These include a GIF of a dog sticking its head outside a car window at high speeds, audio samples of children laughing and goats bleating, and a meme of a man making a face at the camera with the quote “If Monday had a face… This would be it.” And if all else fails, there’s the classic “Say cheese!” The big picture student in Vazquez’s lab, programmed Shutter to have a wide range of funniness. Humor is, of course, subjective, and one person’s comedy gold could leave another audience cold. We’re not really going after what the best joke is, but how we can use this humor to elicit smiles and use that to take better pictures. ![]() “We’ve been trying different kinds of humor that the robot photographer can use. “That made us interested in how to make the robot humorous,” she said. In talking to human photographers, a common theme that came up was that laughter is a great way to make people comfortable in front of the camera. “Now that we have a social agent that can engage people and change what they’re doing, we can ask, ‘What opportunities does that open for taking photos?’” Marynel Vasquez, assistant professor of computer science, and undergraduate student Annie Gao test the next generation of Shutter. “We’re looking at what the robot photographer can do to get more positive reactions from people,” said Vazquez, assistant professor of computer science. Vazquez and her team are focusing on the special ability of good photographers to spark that instant of joy and capture it in a photo. When people in a photo look glum or expressionless, all the compositional details won’t save it. ![]() But as professional photographers will tell you, that’s only half the job. Most work in robot photography has homed in on the technical side of things - focus, lighting, placement of subject. ![]() Another is the corridor between Becton and Dunham Labs, a spot teeming with students and faculty as they pass to classes. One is in the John Klingenstein Lab at the Center for Engineering Innovation & Design. Vazquez has a few places she’d like to station it, all of which have good foot traffic. Built with a stylish retro-futuristic look, including “eyes” on a touch screen programmed to interact with people, the robot photographer - they call it Shutter - is designed to catch the attention of passers-by. She and her research team have built a robot designed to negotiate the quick but very complex interactions between photographer and subject - that is, putting someone at ease and drawing out a genuine smile, all in a matter of seconds. There are technical details like composition and lighting, but there’s also a matter of connecting emotionally with the photo’s subjects. Good portrait photography is as much art as it is science. This article originally appeared in Yale Engineering Magazine.
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