Building Hearts and Minds for Robots

Echo & Shadow

Echo & Shadow is an intelligent robot company. We have created the Echo & Shadow Platform™, which is a server-based system to create and deliver interactive characters ("Actors") over a network. Users can interact and have conversations with Actors via instant messaging, chat applications, online help and search systems, and through conversations with non-playing characters in games and virtual worlds.

Actors may be used by corporations to extend branded character properties (an interactive Bart Simpson™, or Ronald McDonald™, for example), by massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) and virtual worlds companies as non-player characters and avatars (giving all the non-human characters the ability to speak, for example), and can also be used by people that normally publish text on websites (such as blogs, news sites, or portals). This means that all of these bodies of text become interactive.

There are many uses for Actors beyond interactive entertainment: business call centers; shopping and ecommerce systems; help and FAQ knowledge bases; education, simulations, and training; sales and marketing; and fine art.

Actors not only chat or talk using natural language (such as English or Japanese), they also move, gesture, express emotions, tell stories, answer questions, and engage in interesting conversations. What, how, and when they talk can all be programmed, and an Echo & Shadow customer can create libraries of reactions that the Actor can then express.

The Echo & Shadow Platform™ will be offered as a hosted service on the Web or a licensed package that can be run on a private network.

The Echo and Shadow Platform™ has been developed over the last three years by over two dozen engineers participating in six different countries. As of mid-2008, we are running initial test cases with partner companies, in preparation for a platform rollout later this year.