“The Senseless Drawing Robot is a self-propelling device on a skateboard that sprays abstract linework on a stretch of wall using a double pendulum. extrapolating the dynamism of modern graffiti forms, the robot takes advantage of the chaotic gestures of the swinging pendulum to create erratic yet organic paint strokes. Featuring a motorized skateboard base, the construction consists of a single arm equipped with a rotary encoder attached to the fulcrum of the pendulum. as the robot moves from side to side, the swinging motion of the arm is amplified through the physics of inertia which is delineated by a quick release of paint from the spray can. the resulting collage of lines is a complex illustration derived from a simple operation.”
The title Senseless Drawing Robot seems to be a critique of the value of graffiti or perhaps of its own contributions to graffiti. The piece feel to me less of a critique and more of taking the movement that is very human and making a mechanical assembly that owns the same movement. Its robotic arm is very successful in capturing the movement and form of graffiti drawing. The curves of graffiti seemed to be connected to the structure of a human arm, but this mechanic makes it feel owned by the robot as well. From a distance it is nearly indistinguishable from what might be on the side of bridge or back ally. While it captures the fundamental stroke of graffiti it lacks any of the personalization or distinctiveness that gives some graffiti value. I also feel that graffiti losses its value when constructed artificially in an art gallery such as this. The robot should be out side doing real graffiti next to other human artists to see how it really holds up.
Robots socially integrated into society is a hot topic for futurist discussion and an often used idea for hollywood. The ability to understand human nuance, implication and subtlety is one of the most alluring and distant goals for robots. While these more ambitious goals are still a way off it is interesting to see where robots are already entering into useful rolls in society. I think the beginnings of it are happening now, with robots being used on more fringe parts of society, like assisting the elderly and those with mental disabilities. In this video we see some robots that are used to help the elderly in japan, a country with a greatly disproportionate elderly population. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFexeUheZOk
This is Paro a robot that mostly avoids uncanny valley by being a robotic stuffed animal. This type of companion bots are supposedly already being used to keep the elderly and children with autism company although I do not know the degree of use. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8mv87e6wE
I think robots will continue to enter into domains classically considered human. Perhaps baby and infant care is next. As often happens with revolutionary changes the change is first seen as impossible, then slowly unavoidable.
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.
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.
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.