The Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center presence in Osaka, Japan, literally doubled this past week as a large contingent of ETC faculty, staff, students, and associates came together to introduce Japanese audiences attending the ICRT Conference (Information, Communication, Robots, & Technology) to the multiple areas of interest studied at ETC Global. The ICRT Conference occurred from November 26 through 28 at the Intex Convention Center on Osaka Harbor, very close to the ETC-Osaka location.

While the students attending ETC-Osaka, Japan, were busily wrapping up their semester-long project for Sharp Electronics, the job of preparing the ETC booth at the sprawling Intex Convention Center on Osaka harbor fell to ETC-Osaka Program Director Michelle Macau, ETC Administrative Associate Kayo Ikeda, translator Fumie Shiraki, ETC Director of Admissions & Marketing Rebecca Lombardi, ETC technology whiz Jim Valenti, ETC-Korea representative JiYeong Yoon, ICEC Board Member Ben Salem, and ETC students Seth Sivak and Ryan Hipple, both of whom traveled to Osaka from Pittsburgh for this event. ETC Executive Producer, Don Marinelli, was also in attendance to meet with representatives from Japanese companies interested in learning more about the ETC.

Seeing that the overarching theme of the conference was robotics, the ETC shipped its world-renowned robotic favorite Quasi to Osaka for this showcase event. Happily, the myriad language skills and outgoing personalities of people connected to the ETC allowed Quasi to converse with conference visitors and attendees in Japanese, Korean, English, Spanish, and even some Chinese! More than a few visitors were amazed at the “artificial Intelligence and amazing speech recognition and speech synthesis” capabilities of this lovable robot. Even after they were shown the amazing animatronic robot puppeteers ‘behind the curtain’ the smiles remained. It was as though Quasi became even more lovable as a result.

To emphasize the multiple talents and interests of the ETC students, the decision was made to also bring along a current ETC project as well as an archival project. Representing the current state of ETC project work was the Action/Adventure project’s Winds of Orbis. This Wii, DDR pad, and PC-based immersive game completely captivated Japanese players who, unlike most Westerners, seemed intent on getting through as many levels of the game as possible. Action/Adventure project team members Seth Sivak and Ryan Hipple were kept busy throughout the three-day conference, and most likely got into very good shape as a result of their seemingly non-stop playing.

Various Osaka City Government officials stopped by the ETC booth after the conference to express their thanks, appreciation, and gratitude for the ETC’s presence at ICRT. It was a sentiment reciprocated as ICRT proved to be a wonderful forum to show off the capabilities of the ETC.