[archive]

Robots categorized as: Artificial Intelligence

2009

The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons

Categories: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Dance – Tag:

The Hosts: A Masquerade Of Improvising Automatons extends Wade Marynowsky’s development of custom-built robotics and interactive, performative media. In this installation, Marynowsky explores roboticist Masahiro Mori’s theory outlined in The Uncanny Valley (1970), which suggests that in designing humanoid robots one should not aim for total human likeness, but for an alternative to an uncanny appearance.

Media artist/artistic director; Wade Marynowsky, Electrical engineer; Aras Vaichas, Programmer; Jeremy Apthorp, Lighting; Mirabelle Wouters Costume; Sally Jackson, Photos; Garth Knight.

14 August – 12 September, 2009, Performance Space at the Carriage Works, 245 Wilson Street, Sydney, Australia.

http://marynowsky.net/

2008

Boris the bourgeois robot.

Categories: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Dance – Tag:

Wade Marynowsky; The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie robot.
Electrical engineering: Aras Vaichas, Software design: Mr.Snow, Dress maker: Susan Marynowsky.

The Insitute of Contemporary Art Newtown (I.C.A.N). 5th – 21st of December, 2008, Sydney, Australia.

By appropriating the title of the film The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972) I pay homage to the surrealist film director Luis Buñuel. The film is about a group of upper middle class people attempting, despite continual interruptions to dine together. So what is Bunuel trying to say? That the bourgeoisie are charming because they have nothing to worry about except how and when they will dine together? Or that they are in fact hideous creatures with nothing better to do than waffle about?

Taking this question into the gallery, the bourgeoisie robot is operated by invited mystery guests over the internet, for the duration of the exhibition. The charming robot avatar waits for visitors to enter the space and then converses with them in a polite and pleasant manner. The robot is interested in talking about food, robots, dancing and other general bourgeois banter. In doing so the robot questions the role of the gallery as a place of contemplation.

The robot wears a hooped dress, which recalls the beginnings of automata, the 18th century. For example: Jacques de Vaucanson’s mechanical flute player and defecating duck (1738). Vaucanson’s automata stunned European eyes of the era producing the first uncanny moments in robotic art.

The fact that bourgeois robot’s voice is male and that he wears a dress highlights the camp sensibility of robots. As Steve Dixon states in his essay Metal performance (2005) “Robotic movement mimics and exaggerates but never achieves the human, just as camp movement mimics and exaggerates but never achieves womanhood”.

The robots head, consisting of a camera inside a plastic dome, references the now common place surveillance (CCTV) domes in shopping centres and other public spaces. Through physical inhabitation of a real-life avatar the work is concerned with the evolution of mediated communication technologies and their influence on the nature of the conversation.

2007

PERCRO Body Extender

Categories: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial, Military, Performance Art, Science, Transportation – Tag:

An ongoing research project of the PERCRO Perceptual Robotics Laboratory, this is a highly interdisciplinary effort involving coordination and collaboration between engineers, artists, designers and neuroscientists. The aim is to develop a sophisticated full-body robotic interface, driven by sensors capable of sensing human muscle activity and interpreted by intelligent software systems, through which the robot becomes a natural extension of the user’s body and mind.

1993

Paro

Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Household, Toy – Tags: , , ,

Paro is a therapeutic robot baby seal, intended to have a calming effect on and elicit emotional responses in patients of hospitals and nursing homes, similar to Animal-Assisted Therapy.

It was designed by Takanori Shibata of the Intelligent System Research Institute of Japan’s AIST beginning in 1993. It was first exhibited to the public in late 2001, and handmade versions have been sold commercially since 2004. Paro is based on harp seals Shibata saw in Canada, where he also recorded their cries that Paro uses.

The robot has touchsensors and responds to petting by moving its tail and opening and closing its eyes. It also responds to sounds and can learn its own name. It can show emotions such as surprise, happiness and anger. It produces sounds similar to a real baby seal and (unlike a real baby seal) is active during the day and goes to sleep at night.

AIST refers to Paro as a ”Mental Commitment Robots”, which they define as: “developed to interact with human beings and to make them feel emotional attachment to the robots. Rather than using objective measures, these robots trigger more subjective evaluations, evoking psychological impressions such as “cuteness” and comfort. Mental Commitment Robots are designed to provide 3 types of effects: psychological, such as relaxation and motivation, physiological, such as improvement in vital signs, and social effects such as instigating communication among inpatients and caregivers.”

Paro is at present also being used in Danish nursing homes.

2000

ASIMO – Advanced Step in Innovative MObility

Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Educational, Science – Tags: , , , , , ,

ASIMO is a humanoid robot created by Honda. Standing at 130 centimeters (4 feet 3 inches) and weighing 54 kilograms (114 pounds), the robot resembles a small astronaut wearing a backpack and can walk or run on two feet at speeds up to 6 km/h. ASIMO was created at Honda’s Research & Development Wako Fundamental Technical Research Center in Japan, and was unveiled i 2000.

Officially, the name is an acronym for “Advanced Step in Innovative MObility” and not a reference to science fiction writer and inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics, Isaac Asimov.

Asimo represented state of the art robotics i 2000 when it was first introduced. Amongst other things it has the capacity to recognition of moving objects, recognition of postures and gestures, recognizing its environments, distinguish sounds and recognize faces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO

1983

RB5X

Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Educational – Tags: , , , ,

The RB5X Intelligent Robot was the first mass-produced programmable robot that was made for home use, experimentation, and educational purposes. The RB5X is still being produced today.

Its inputs include eight bumper panels, a light sensor and a sound sensor. The robot can learn from experience:

“The RB5X Intelligent Robot is a sophisticated engineering effort whose microelectronics and machinery can be compared to the complex make-up of humans. Like a person, RB5X consists of a collection of subsystem “organs” that work together to make the robot function and become more than the sum of its parts, except that the comparatively crude organs consist of electronic and mechanical devices. Brain: RB5X brain is an on-board microprocessor, the INS8073 that works in conjunction with the robot’s software to permit the RB5X to learn from its sensory experiences. Using this self learning software, the RB5X progresses from simple, random responses to eventual prediction of future events in its environment, based on analysis of past prediction of future events in its environment, based on analysis of past experience.” – RB Robotics, manufacturer.

1989

Genghis

Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Military, Science – Tags: , , , , , ,

Genghis was built at MIT in the mid-1980s to demonstrate the efficacy of using numerous small, light, mobile robots to reconnoitre the Martian surface. Genghis was famous for being made quickly and cheaply due to construction methods and was the prototype for the later autonomous “spider” robots Attila and Hannibal. Genghis weighs about 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), contains 6 pyroelectric sensors for detecting animal life, and employs 12 motors to power its 6 independently operating legs.

Its six sensors picked up on the heat of a living creature, such as a person or a dog, and triggered the stalking mode. It would scramble to its feet and follow its prey, moving around furniture and climbing over obstacles to keep the prey in sight.

Genghis is now located in the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.

1968

HAL 9000

Categories: Artificial Intelligence, Film – Tags: , ,

HAL 9000 is a fictional computer in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey and Stanley Kubricks classic film 2001: A space Odyssey. It has become a central cultural reference in the field of Artificial Intelligence. HAL turns out not to be a helping character, but the villain of the plot.

HAL (Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic Computer) is an artificial intelligence, the sentient on-board computer of the spaceship Discovery. HAL is never visualized as a single entity. He is, however, portrayed with a soft voice and a conversational manner.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the astronauts consider disconnecting HAL’s cognitive circuits when he appears to be mistaken in reporting a fault. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts in order to protect and continue “his” real programmed directives.