The IOIO-OTG is finally here!

IOIO-OTG

In short, this development board allows you to interface with the physical world (sensors, actuators) using an Android device as the computational brain. The major improvement between this and the 1st/original IOIO board is that the IOIO-OTG can also interface with your Windows, Linux or OS X machine, and soon with the RaspberryPi (under “Coming Up”).

It’s a rather capable I/O board, featuring:

Here’s everything you need to know:

• Ytai Ben-Tsvi: Google employee, lead developer of IOIO
• IOIO on GitHub: the main code repository
• IOIO on Sparkfun: where to buy the hardware
• Ytai’s IOIO Gallery: collection of IOIO-based projects and posts, curated by Ytai
• MIT MediaLab IOIO party: results of a recent IOIO Hack-a-thon

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.

More later..

Body pong to be played between two people using either their hands or their bodies using processing. The inputs are two paralax distance sensors and the screen output and score led’s are the outputs. The video got a bit silly as we were both tired.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TMDYPdubjI

This is a laser pendulum. The motor driving the pendulum turns on when the laser is blocked from contacting photo sensor. Each time the laser hits the sensor the motor switches direction.
 

cold description: When magnetic sensor on upper arm senses magnet on lower arm, blower is triggered, which inflates prosthetic bicep muscle. When a stretch sensor created with conductive fabric is stretched across the inflating bicep muscle, a sounding pitch becomes lower as the muscle becomes bigger.

warm thoughts: Here, I’m playing with an interest in prostheses. In some ways, robotics (and technology in general) in our everyday lives already act as prosthetics. In this prototype for a 2-sensor 2-actuator system, this symbiotic relationship between humans and robotics technology is (perhaps reversed) and reflected as a non-functional, cosmetic flex of the human muscle. In relation to biomimetic robotics, this set up is somewhat reflective of an ectosymbiotic system.

While they are generally used for spot welding, positioning, and ergonomic lifts for moving objects that are too heavy for a human to move, the robotic arms with multiple degrees of freedom have become industry standard tools in just about any major, high-volume manufacturing facility. In this case, a few of the arms were repurposed to create the necessary motions in wrapping gifts with gift paper. This was for a theatrical trailer for GM, the automotive company during the holidays. Regardless, the robots did actually serve the purpose in folding paper in the proper shape and in the proper time period for different sized gifts to be wrapped for the public to witness. This display in technology helped the general public better understand the type of equipment used in producing the vehicles they drive on the roads today.

www.autoblog.com/2012/12/18/gm-manufacturing-robots-take-up-second-job-as-present-wrappers/#continued

In general, the dryness of this text left me frustrated with the notions of utility and purposefulness. Was the article useful? Yes, I guess. Is its view that robots should serve as usefully as this text? Yes, perhaps even more so. So I came up with my own criteria for a robot that might un-service us as the antithesis. I was hoping to dig up an example of something really silly, but well made — without purpose, but suggestive of or referential to something interesting, critically or philosophically. And last criteria: aesthetically pleasing? (Or at least perhaps visually referential to something outside robotics?)  I was pretty excited by the predator slugbot (p.49) and the ecobot that converts dead flies to electrical energy (p.53), both cited in the text. But damn, they look awful. And they suggest future improvement to humanity! Yikes, that sounds useful. So I’m not sure I’ve found any artist-made useless robots that really strike the note I’m looking for.

Instead of following the assignment exactly, per se, let me drag you through the mud that was my search tonight:

1) Non-aesthetic, utilitarian end of the spectrum: Seal Whisker Sensors

web.mit.edu/towtank/www/sealWhiskers.html

Oooo, sensor development! Obviously this is more on the straight science side, using biomimetic approach to robot design, and at this stage is purely utilitarian in order for AUVs to feel wakes….  Not unrelated to the Bristol Robotics Lab Scratchbot (p.55). But, hey, maybe it gives you underwater camera ideas, doesn’t it, Garret Brown?

But, NOT WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR.

4) Douglas Repetto’s “Nearly Human” project

music.columbia.edu/~douglas/portfolio/nearly_human/

“Nearly Human (one billionth of a human brain) is a deeply flawed physical metaphor for a human brain.

Like many brain (and other biological) metaphors, it is much too simple and mostly wrong. But it’s also an attempt at being a little bit right in ways that are non-typical for popular representations of brains.”

This seems pretty far on the “Art” side of the spectrum, and arguably might not be a robot, because I am not so sure there are any sensors in that mess. However, I think this project deals with some of the things discussed in the article as subject matter in an interesting way, since as you will see in Repetto’s notes, he is thinking about the role of metaphor in human-intelligence research, as well as the absurdity of the idea of even coming close to replicating the human brain.

Okay, weird. Cool. BUT NOT WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR.

1) Bartending robot

W/  touch-sensitive “skin” …

“Silly?” Check minus (not quite silly ENOUGH). Well made? Check. Without purpose? Uncheck, check, uncheck, check, whatever. If we debate this, we may be debating if alcohol truly serves a purpose. This ambiguity makes it all the more interesting. So, is it referential / suggestive of something interesting, critically speaking? Yeah, sure. An alcohol-serving machine / “companion” references the complexities of the questionable utility of recreational drugs, etc, and could be said, as you purchase your drink from it, to reiterate the numbing virtual structures of internet-era capitalism, eliminating the job of a grungy bearded or breasted barista who would stand in its place otherwise (whoa! but I think I’m giving it too much credit)… After all, who better to question what the model might be for the perfect human companion than the bartender?

However, do I find this bartender aesthetically interesting or pleasing? Rehhh. No. Falls into all the tropes of Robot-servitude and the aesthetic of plasticized human-features that I find fatiguing. The bowtie even throws it back to the butler-bots of science fiction, the analogue slave days of robotics! This stuff is amusing, but not what I’m looking for.  The aesthetic and style of interaction seems to harken the text’s reference to conversational bots (In the humanoid robot companion section in the Robotic Futures chapter), which is written with a level of utility in mind that seems to pull the whole idea back into the realm of medicine or assembly line production. Maybe I don’t want a good lookin’ or a nice talkin’ bartender?

So, nice bartender? NOT WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR.

ALTHOUGH, this might be closer: www.gizmag.com/inebriator-robot-bartender/23974/

2) (Not unrelated to above) : Robotic Chefs

www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/robot-chefs_n_1601634.html

But equally problematic, in my humble opinion (from the point of view of “as art project,” perhaps)….

NOT WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR.

Okay, mission failed. But there’s some okay reverse-inspiration here.

A robot that flies like a bird – “Biomimicry”
Man has always had a fascination for flight. Starting with the wright brothers we have been inspired by nature – using wings and applying principles of aerodynamics learnt from birds. But the “smart bird” is something completely different, the smart bird is not inspired by nature but rather is a copy of it, an attempt to replicate it. The result is compelling. The team creates something that is in some ways surreal – a flying robot that looks natural. Research into robot aesthetics / movements / form / gesture is fascination because it’s through these mediums that we interface with the robot. They play a role in dictating our experience of the interaction  – whether we come to accept the robot as a companion, tool or entertainer or reject it for being too different, unfamiliar and alien.