Tootfinder

Simulating Infant First-Person Sensorimotor Experience via Motion Retargeting from Babies to Humanoids
Francisco M. L\'opez, Hoshinori Kanazawa, Ondrej Fiala, Yakov Balashov, Valentin Marcel, Lukas Rustler, Miles Lenz, Dongmin Kim, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jochen Triesch, Matej Hoffmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.27583 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.27583 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.27583
arXiv:2604.27583v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Motion retargeting from humans to human-like artificial agents is becoming increasingly important as humanoid robots grow more capable. However, most existing approaches focus only on reproducing kinematics and ignore the rich sensorimotor experience associated with human movement. In this work, we present a framework for simulating the multimodal sensorimotor experiences of infants using physical and virtual humanoids. From a single video, our method reconstructs the infant's body configuration by extracting its skeletal structure and estimating the full 3D pose from each frame. Then we map the reconstructed motion onto several developmental platforms: the physical iCub robot and the virtual simulators pyCub, EMFANT and MIMo. Replaying the retargeted motions on these embodiments produces simulated multisensory streams including proprioception (joints and muscles), touch, and vision. For the best-matching embodiment, the retargeting achieves sub-centimeter accuracy and enables a rich multimodal analysis of infant development as well as enhanced automated annotation of behaviors. This framework provides a unique window into the infant's sensorimotor experience, offering new tools for robotics, developmental science, and early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders. The code is available at https://github.com/ctu-vras/motion-retargeting/.
toXiv_bot_toot

A long time ago, when I was still going to school, I often thought about some class or other: "What's the point of this? I'm just wasting time on stuff I won't ever need. And my grades are going down because of it." So I supported all these bright ideas like having schools work the curriculum out with the industry.
Nowadays, I know better. The purpose of school is not to produce ready-made employees. It's to give people a wider perspective. Perhaps they won't use most of what they learn there, perhaps they'll have bad memories of some classes, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you learn how to learn, how to reason, how to think.
I hate what's been happening to schools lately. They are becoming conveyor belts: we throw children on them, throw specific knowledge at them and see what sticks, we do exams and classify them. We expect to get a thoughtless laborer at the end, someone ready to take a specific job immediately.
A human whose only purpose in life is mindless labor and mindless consumption. Metaphorically, someone who's just going to spend their time off by drinking beer in the front of the TV and breeding more babies. Babies who will eventually become more cogs in the machine, fueling the infinite growth, trying to prevent this mindless system from falling apart.
#AntiCapitalism

Japan Airlines will introduce humanoid robots on a trial basis from the beginning of May,
with a view to deploying them permanently as a solution to the country’s chronic labour shortage.
The Chinese-made humanoid robots will move travellers’ luggage and cargo on the tarmac at Haneda Airport,
which handles more than 60 million passengers a year.

Nice article, about a serious problem/risk with AI models. AI poisoning.
"Part of the problem is that AI models can offer wildly different results depending on exactly what is asked and what kind of information they are drawing on. Search for “bixonimania”, and Google’s AI overview might treat it as a legitimate condition. Ask it “Is bixonimania real?” and the same AI overview might confirm that it isn’t legitimate."

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real
Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@tvaziri/116568498570833214
This is becoming just as true for prompted video AI, processed video AI, and coding AI, as it was for every other kind of CG or data processing … did the invention of digital spreadsheets mean we spen…