The thinking head

Flinders University’s engineering ingenuity will be on show in Beijing during the Olympic Games when the most advanced version of their "Thinking Head" makes its international debut.

The product of an artificial intelligence research program at Flinders and three other Australian universities, the Thinking Head can talk, show emotions, maintain eye contact with visitors, and even compose basic poetry.

Flinders’ School of Informatics and Engineering Thinking Head research team, led by Associate Prof David Powers and including research associates Dr Martin Luerssen and Dr Trent Lewis, employed sophisticated algorithms and software programming to almost bring the Thinking Head to life with a range of facial expressions, gestures and eye contact.

In response to typed questions, the Thinking Head filters thousands of pieces of stored data to craft a response that is delivered in a ‘human’ voice. And, given a subject, can generate a simple rhyming couplet.

Associate Prof Powers said current challenges being tackled by the research team include the development of a lip-reading capability and the boosting of The Thinking Head’s ‘knowledge’ through access to the global, on-line encyclopedia, Wikipedia.