Tiago Ribeiro

Tiago Ribeiro

Consulting in Artificial Intelligence and
AI-driven Characters and Animation

Independent Consultor & Advisor

formerly Soul Machines

formerly GAIPS @ INESC-ID

Lisbon, Portugal

Biography

As a consultor, advisor and leader in AI technology, be it CGI or Robotics, I focus not only on adopting and inventing state-of-the-art and world-class solutions, technologies and methodologies, but also on aligning new and existing technology with the given technical requirements, product and business goals and strategy, so that AI can be used to power products and a Cost-Effective, Revenue-Focused and User-Experience-driven manner.

How? I am an eclectic scientist and engineer focused on intelligent, interactive technology, with a strong academic background, and additionally self-taught through my passion of animation, photography, cinema, music, sound design and nearly all other artful expressions. Through the years I have been building a unique career, focused on creating intelligent artificial creatures that exhibit the illusion of life.

My major work has been on robots and digital people that interact with people, in various contexts such as entertainment, education, personal- or labour- assistance, etc. Within those fields, I have accumulated over 13 years of expertise in animation systems and interactive technology for autonomous social agents.

My creatures aren’t lifelike solely by design or by movement. That’s why I always start any presentations by saying:

Animation isn’t just about motion - it is about expressing thought, identity, emotion and intention.

I strive to understand and create the basic underlying mechanisms that allow an artificial intelligence to portray its existence through an artificial embodiment, be it virtual or robotic, abstract or human-like. In essence, I’ve been architecting and engineering Autonomous Characters.

During my PhD I brought together the fields of computer animation and robotics to create social, interactive robots, that look and feel as animate and alive as the characters I love from movies. That meant linking artificial intelligence and interactive robotics control, with character animation, and human-robot interaction. I called it Robot Animation, which became the cornerstone of my career.

In the past five years I’ve focused on virtual characters by performing and leading R&D on autonomous, lifelike animation of Digital People (DPs), at Soul Machines, including developing their automomous gesturing capabilities, their ability to connect socially and emotionally with users, and making them more capable and better integrated with new technologies such as LLMs, and new markets such as digital celebrities and influencers, metaverse and alikes. Such DPs can be authored and personalized for various tasks, goals, environments, audiences and services. They present a real-time, lifelike performance through a properly crafted balance between biologically-inspired behaviour systems, with both artistically-directed and generative motion and behaviour, all integrated into a complex AI ecosystem of linguistic and conversation models and multimodal interactive technologies.

My connection with the arts is very personal, and is driven in most part by my passion for animation, but also for digital film and photography, three particular fields on which I am mostly self-taught and also explore as a hobby. These creative abilities and understanding, allied with my technical background, have allowed me to work in teams with both artists, roboticists, social-scientists and software-engineers, to bring them together and build a bridge between all those worlds.

By working together and in multi-disciplinary settings, we are better able to materialize our imagination into real, physical achievements, and to push all those fields forward into the future.

Interests
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Animation
  • Robot Animation
  • Human-Robot Interaction
  • Social Robotics
  • Interaction Design
  • Affective Computing
Education
  • PhD in Computer Science & Engineering, 2020

    Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

  • MSc in Computer Science & Engineering, 2011

    Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

  • BSc in Computer Science & Engineering, 2008

    Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon

  • High School, 2004

    Escola Secundária José Estêvão, Aveiro

Skills

Development
Python
C/C++
C#
Unity Game Engine
Unreal Game Engine
HTML/CSS
Production & Team Skills
Whiteboarding / Miro
Systems Architecture
Mentoring
Product Vision & Strategy
Product/Project Management
Public Presentation
Reporting
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Animation
Machine Learning
Human-Robot Interaction
Autonomous Socially-Intelligent Agents
Large Language Models (LLMs)
Data Science / Analytics
Generative AI (general)

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
October 2024 – Present Turin, Italy (Remote)
  • Lead the research and development of innovative technologies related to the collection, processing, and secure handling of biometric data (including facial, voice, and behavioral characteristics) for the creation of digital replicas of public figures (our Talents). This is done with a rigorous focus on safeguarding personal identity rights and preventing unauthorized use.
  • Spearhead advanced R&D into the development of autonomous virtual humans, Gen-AI digital replicas, and Gen-AI autonomous agents, with a forward-looking approach towards future applications in VR/AR, Web4, and beyond, all while ensuring full control over Talent image rights.
  • Oversee the creation of a robust platform that tracks usage, verifies authenticity, and certifies the provenance of all digital assets representing Talents, ensuring protection against identity theft, deepfake abuse, or misrepresentation.
  • Direct the implementation of cutting-edge systems for the safe creation, management, and licensing of digital replicas, guaranteeing that all usage complies with stringent legal standards for public IP protection.
  • Collaborate closely with company leadership to align technological advancements with business objectives, ensuring the protection of Talent rights while enabling secure and profitable monetization of digital assets.
  • Work directly with leadership to drive the strategic growth of the tech team, fostering an environment of innovation and excellence, and building a team capable of delivering on the company’s mission to protect and enhance the digital identities of Talents.
 
 
 
 
 
Consulting on Architecture and Pipeline for Autonomous Robot Animation
August 2024 – Present Los Angeles, CA, USA (Remote)
  • Develop and advise on the architectural vision and roadmap for the implementation of a procedural and programmable animation engine for social robotics applications that can be deployed and adapted to various embodiments and tasks, while supporting a design-based authoring approach.
  • Work with the company on the overall concept of a robot operating system supporting such engine and its integration with current and future AI and ML techniques that may be developed or adopted for human-robot interaction applications.
 
 
 
 
 
Consulting on Research and Technology Leadership
July 2024 – September 2024 Turin, Italy (Remote)
  • Lead the concept and development of a roadmap and platform for Autonomous Virtual Clones if public figures that can exist and act in 3D realities.
  • Lead the development of an MVP using Unreal Engine’s Metahumans and a custom Brain controller that uses external services such as STT, TTS and LLMs to endow the Metahuman with real-time intelligent interaction capabilities.
 
 
 
 
 
Open to short-term Consulting & Advising in Artificial Intelligence
May 2024 – Present based in Lisbon, Portugal. Available remotely to anywhere.

Available for short-term consulting for companies and projects seeking advising and know-how on the adoption, application, and development of artificial intelligence and AI-driven mechanisms to enable their products and solutions.

In particular, I can provide expertise in the fields of:

  • Autonomous Digital Humans and Characters
  • Human-Robot Interaction
  • User Experience and Product Vision using AI technologies
  • Metaverse-directed applications
  • LLM adoption/integration, fine-tuning and local deployment
 
 
 
 
 
Principal Research Engineer, Autonomous Animation
April 2023 – May 2024 Auckland, New Zealand (fully remote)

AGI company that provides Autonomous Digital People for a variety of markets

Focused on delivering product value through R&D that intersects the fields of computer graphics animation and artificial intelligence, including, but not limited to the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI within the context of interactive, autonomous behaviour and motion for full body virtual human characters. In my vision, the success of this R&D lies in working together with an animation director.

Within the challenge of creating new methods for real-time autonomous character animation that is based on the artist-CGI-AI triad, my responsabilities included:

  • Lead the technical and architectural development of the autonomous animation system.
  • Develop autonomous gesturing and social and emotional behaviours of digital people.
  • Participate in the product strategy with feedback from/to technology development.
  • Work with artists to ensure the animated motion looks natural and is fail-safe.
  • Invent mechanisms that enable autonomous animation of digital characters.
  • Create pipelines and workflows that allow to train, evaluate and integrate ML models (e.g. LLMs, GenAI) for animation
  • Promote, support and lead the transfer of research into product.
  • Establish directives for autonomous behaviour design and selection.
  • Provide guidelines for expressive behaviour of emotion and personality.
  • Define instruments to measure animate and interactive qualities of autonomous digital characters.
 
 
 
 
 
AI Animation Scientist & Senior Researcher II
January 2020 – March 2023 Auckland, New Zealand (fully remote)

AGI company that provides Autonomous Digital People for a variety of markets

Responsibilities include:

  • Design and develop the skeletal animation system.
  • Develop autonomous gesturing and social and emotional behaviours of digital people.
  • Work with artists to ensure the animated motion looks natural and is fail-safe.
  • Invent mechanisms that enable autonomous animation of digital characters.
  • Establish directives for autonomous behaviour design and selection.
  • Provide guidelines for expressive behaviour of emotion and personality.
  • Define instruments to measure animate and interactive qualities of autonomous digital characters.
 
 
 
 
 
Data Scientist & Data Pipeline Engineer
January 2019 – November 2019 Lisbon, Portugal (partially remote)

Smart food company

  • Created custom ETL pipeline using Python from various sources into Google BigQuery.
  • Datascience tasks using Google’s BigQuery SQL, DataStudio and Spreadsheets.
 
 
 
 
 
HRI Architecture Consultor
September 2018 – September 2018 Trollhättan, Sweden (remote)
University College Provided consulting on the HRI architecture aimed at the use of the NAO and Pepper robots
 
 
 
 
 
Robot Animation & Unreal Engine Developer
December 2017 – March 2018 Brooklyn & New York City, USA (partially remote)
Contemporary Art Gallery Exhibition ‘PLAY’, conceived by the NYC-based artists Urs Fischer, with Madeline Hollander Provided consulting on Robot Animation, development of robot animation tools (Maya, Houdini), and development of interactive behaviour simulation in Unreal Engine.
 
 
 
 
 
Technical Direction
February 2011 – November 2017 Lisbon and Oeiras, Portugal

Reseach Lab

  • Developed an HRI platform for various projects and robots
  • Provided guidance and assistance to various MSc and PhD student project
 
 
 
 
 
Research Assistant
February 2011 – November 2017 Lisbon and Oeiras, Portugal

Embodied Perceptive Tutors for Empathy-Based Learning

  • Research Assistant
  • Architecture Design & Development,
  • Behaviour Management & Animation
 
 
 
 
 
Research Assistant
February 2011 – November 2017 Lisbon and Oeiras, Portugal

LIving with Robots and Embodied Companions

  • Research Assistant
  • Robot Animation System

Contact

If you wish to inquiry mean about consulting and advising services, or just to network and connect, please use the submission form below, or contact me directly using the e-mail address provided. Alternatively, reach out directly on social media platform such as LinkedIn or X (Twitter).