MARCO videos

"MARCO @ UFreiburg":

In 2014 we started to build "MARCO", the Multimodal Autonomous RoboChess Opponent":

We demonstrated MARCO at ICMI2014 in Istanbul, Turkey, and won the Outstanding Demo Award. (Watch this video on youtube, if you like.)

In that configuration we realized:

  • a few display movements
  • emotional facial expressions driven by WASABI based on the evaluation of the board
  • detection of and recovering from "invalid moves" by the human player (at least to some extend)

Next steps / improvements:

  • change the display for a bigger one
  • implement many more agent  behaviors based on a newly invented animation framework
  • finish integration of NOVA framework
  • possibly integrate the IntraFace tracking software
  • devise and conduct empirical studies

It can also be controlled from a remote place using the freechess.org server and any client. Thus, someone can play against me using the robot arm to move his or her pieces.