Robotic Photographer

Boojum137 writes " ExtremeTech has an article on a robotic wedding photographer named Lewis. Lewis's hardware stats are modest, so he uses a clever trick to locate people based on skin tone, which is also independent of race. After locating potential subjects with a myriad of sensors, including sonar, laser range finders, and infra-red, he tries to frame the shot according to photographic rules of composition. But the real innovation behind this "red trashcan" is its ability to fade into the background. According to Lewis's creators at Washington University's Media and Machines lab, because of the robot's passive nature, people tend to ignore it after short period of ogling. This allows for some great natural shots, instead of the typical forced and self-conscious shots from human wedding photographers. And, in case you were wondering, Lewis is going to live up to his name in November."

Re:you can barely see it

[Steve Franklin]

It's unnoticeable in the sense that someone peering DOWN into one of those vertical viewfinder cameras tends to get ignored. It's not that it can't be seen. It's just that it's a lot less intrusive. Basically, there's no eye contact.

Human's are funny that way.

Re:As a former wedding photographer,

[overunderunderdone]

Points 1-3 are engineering problems and solvable. Point 4 is quite valid. Until artificial intelligence is much more human I can't imagine something like this being able to do a good job of this task. Unfortunatly there are MANY very bad photographers doing wedding photography. I've been to weddings where a walking red trashcan would be less obtrusive and would probably take better pictures to boot.

Your final note about getting a GOOD photographer is the real solution. (at least until we are ALL replaced by robots). I had a great photographer at my wedding, totally unobtrusive and a real artist. We also had some friends who where good photographers that we asked to take B&W candid shots. Admittedly as art students we had a lot more knowledge of photographers (and friends with BFA's in photography) but there are good photographers out there. For candid shots, if there is an art school nearby getting a student who is really interested in street photography (probably most of them) to do candids would probably get you some really nice candid shots for very little money (If you want unobtrusive just pick one without too many piercings & maybe pay them extra wear something that *isn't* making a statement ;)

Audio input

[MediaBoy77]

I wonder if they've considered adding a few microphones to Lewis?

I remember a gimmick 35mm camera a while back that came mounted on a tabletop tripod with a servo and directional mic. When the microphone picked up loud noise, the camera swiveled around and shot, the theory being you'd pick up the wildest party moments on film.