“2 robot interaction”

(Please take notice of my lil gut hangin’ out… this gym is for us lazy kids with bad posture)

Robots that deceive.

11 nueral connections – same as discussed Braiteneberg, possibly most similar to vehicle 4

find “food source” –  light ring and avoid dark ring.

“artificial neural network controlled by a binary “genome”. The network consisted of 11 neurons” – connections between sensors and motors. The “neurones” were linked by 33 synapses and strength of each connection controlled by 8bit gene – extended braitenberg – different processes running in parallel .

100 groups of 10 robots – the top 200robots (robots with the most points) mated together to shuffle there “genes”

another round – started to evolve to not shine blue light when “feeding” a third of the robots actually became repulsed to the blue light.

Complexity from environment.

This little device made by David Bowen must be a version of Braitenberg’s vehicles that has attractive behavior to what it senses (either 2b or 4a). The nice thing about this little bot is that it synthesizes its own power from the source that it is attracted to. The set up is slightly different in that the object of desire is out of reach and so the bot ends up circling around the light source never satisfied.

This device records subtle eye movements while your eyes are open. When you blink the recording stops and your eye movements are translated into X & Y movement through servos which manipulate a long rod – exaggerating an otherwise subtle and unnoticed motion.

This device will be expanded to record more facial movements and translate them into other forms of mechanical movement.

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This is a combination of the previous pendulum project and my first pulse modulated motor. This allows me to deliver more power and have control over the speed of the swing.

Remote control insect –

electrodes are attached to the insects left, right and back side, electric pulses are generated by a small wireless receiver on the insects back.
The insect actually becomes an actuator (similar to Robb’s experiments)

I think that that this experiment is interesting in two respects, firstly in that way that we, humans perceive these bionic insects. I think that people generally consider insects to be above robots on a sentient scale. But interestingly, Hofstadter describes that to most people, robotics / electronics is a total mystery, through ignorance they personify simple robots.   It would be interesting to see how these bionic insects are regarded by humans.

Secondly the potential to be able to harness the insects finely tuned senses and even its processing abilities. For it to be able to send back a visual / audio stream and be not only controlled but programmed with what we want it to do.

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The tortoises mentioned in The Cybernetic Brain by Pickering were an attempt, by man, to create new forms of animals via robotics. Many anthropomorphic traits were projected upon them like dancing in front of mirrors and relationships with other bots. This reminded me strongly of the work of the Dutch artist Theo Jansen and probably served as some form of inspiration. Most of you are probably already very familiar with his beach crawlers, but the relationship between them as well as other forms of robotics I find worth comparing. I should note that these are robots are they have input, output and very basic computing done with pressurized bottles.
I choose this video specifically because of Jansen’s explicit reference to the ‘life’ of his creations. The video is even entitled “Presenting Strandbeest: Making New Life.” Jansen loves the idea of his creations not as sculpture but as animals who really inhabit the local beach. He has given ‘the animals’ tools to feel the water, harness energy from the wind and anchor into the sand for for protection. I believe that this attempt to mimic life is analogous to what is done on the ai side to mimic intelligence. Interestingly there is no turing test for animal robots (that I am aware of), perhaps there should be! Certainly regeneration, reproduction and evolution would be on there. Abilties these robots obviously do not have. What I have not seen is the ability for these creatures to actually survive outside own their own for extended periods of time. These creations are undoubtably eloquent and technically marvelous; however, I feel that his obsession with giving the creatures gimmicks that seem to replicate real animals is not doing as much for them.

An interesting dimension for the pieces could be to, in some way, expose how we want to think they are real and how we want to believe they are alive. Much like in our household pets we project and wish into existence many positive traits and abilities that aren’t actually there. If many of these traits are projected and people have pets the intelligence of some robots (turtles, fish, etc) then it may not be long until we have more serious robotic pets.

This robot created by Festo listens to a piece of music breaking each note down into pitch, duration, and intensity. It then plugs that information into various algorithms derived from Conway’s “Game of Life” and creates a new composition while listening to one another producing an improv performance. Conway’s “Game of Life” put simply is a 2d environment where cells(pixels) react to neighboring cells based on rules.

They are:
Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.

This algorithm tends to evolve as time passes and created in an attempt to simulate life.

This robot essentially mimics how composers take a musical motif and evolve it over the life of the piece. The robot sets the sensory information from the music played to it as the initial condition or motif and lets the algorithm change it. Since western music is highly mathematical, robots are naturals. I would say this robot has more characteristics human/animal behavior in Wiener’s example of the music box and the kitten. Unlike the music box this robot performs in accordance with a pattern yet this pattern is directly effected by its past.

My Little Piece of Privacy is a robotic art piece where a small curtain is maneuvered in a window to only block those outside form looking in. Cameras with body tracking detect people and motor drives a belt that has the curtain on it. I believe the strength of this piece is the fact that security and privacy are things that humans and robots mutually understand. Computer systems are designed from the ground up to be secure in regards to attempts to steal data or hijack processes. Security intrusions are one of the biggest threats computers face. The robot helping the human keep his privacy demonstrates a level of relate ability and understanding the robot must have for the human.
However, the problems seems a little forced as one commenter put it “But why you don’t use the large one??.” I wish the person inside was actually more exposed and dependent on the curtain for security. The actually result of a moving curtain is that passersby interacted with it more in a playful way probably decreasing the level of security inside. I think there is a lot of potential for robotic art where a robots try to defend their privacy from viewers.

IndoorOut :

Designed as an indoor, tangible representation of the weather outside – uses muscle wire & a vibrating motor to respond to data received from a wind and ambient light sensor placed outdoors.