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The Force Is With Them: C-3PO Actor Advising Projects At CMU

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

May the fourth be with you. And if you are a student of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), sometimes a part of the Force may just be your project advisor. Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C-3PO in the Star Wars movies has been advising projects at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) since 2004 when CMU faculty met him at a robotics event in Pittsburgh.

Mk Haley, associate executive producer of CMU’s ETC says Daniels continues to be “an invaluable part of our program, both advising projects here when he visits, as well as our new global location in Salford, England.”

Anthony Daniels: Humans have a love/hate relationship with machines. More and more we are relying on them. C-3PO is a non-threatening, human-cyborg interface. He expresses human frailties and doubts that we all have inside but that most grown-ups try to hide.

Humans look for the human in the non-human — a dog with big brown eyes, a machine that expresses feelings. And poor C-3PO has no sense of humor. He’s vulnerable, so we want to make sure he’s okay.

At the moment, Mr. Daniels is getting ready to host Star Wars — In Concert in Japan, after having toured Europe and America twice, says CMU.

[Image Courtesy: Mr. Anthony Daniels, Carnegie Mellon]

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