Microsoft’s ‘Virtual Human’

Microsoft has released their latest innovation – their ‘virtual human’ that reacts to a person’s emotions, voice and body movements. He is known as ‘Milo’ and has been designed for use with Microsoft’s new hands-free motion controller called Kinetic.

Peter Molyneux is the ‘father’ of this new technology and ‘Milo’ and said he wanted to create a character “that seemed alive, that would look me in the eyes and feel real.” Well this is as real as you will get when it comes to virtual people.

“There was a huge row online about that with people saying ‘this can’t be real’,” Mr Molyneux added. Milo was first paraded to the public in a demo at E3 expo in 2009 but since then he has not been seen. The live demonstration demonstrated Microsoft’s soon-to-be released Kinetic controller which uses a series of different sensors, microphones and cameras to interpret the user intentions.

The demo was conducted by an assistant and he showed Milo doing various different activities like exploring a garden, learning to skim stones and finally Milo confided in the assistant after being told off by his parents.

Mr. Molyneux said; “We’re changing the mind of Milo constantly, no two peoples Milos can be the same – you are actually sculpting a human being. Some of the things you do will change the course of his life.”