Zigzaggery

As part of my trip back to the UK I has also arranged a follow-up visit to the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.  I visited for the first time about a year ago, and received a slightly bemused reception, although my visit turned out to be very interesting and worthwhile.

This year I offered to give a lunchtime seminar, before going round to spend time with the various project teams in the laboratory.  I based my presentation on a summary of my research that I had prepared as a lecture last year for teaching in a Communication Studies unit at UWA.  My seminar was very well received, by an interested audience who proceeded to ask lots of good questions.  I definitely found that talking to people in the lab this year was even more fruitful than last year, because they had a better idea about where I was coming from and the direction of my own research.

I was encouraged by the response I received, and have since tried (although, thinking about it now, not tried hard enough) to set up some joint research with members of the lab.  I should really follow this up again, now that I am feeling more positive about my own research.

This year the British Society for Literature and Science conference was at Keele, and I had a particularly good time because I had arranged a panel with my friend from Canada, and therefore had someone to discuss all the papers and panels with, as well as someone to team up with for dinners and drinks.  Of course, we were both heavily jetlagged in opposite directions, so neither of us was exactly the life and soul of the party, but we had a nice time nonetheless.

The panel, Beauty/Aesthetics in Science and Literature, went really well, and people seemed to enjoy all of the papers.  It was lucky that we presented when we did, as John Bryden came up to me in the lunch break and introduced himself.  It turned out he was giving a paper about a dancing robot in a panel the following day.  I’d never have known this if John hadn’t told me, because only the paper titles were available in the programme.  Anyway, crisis averted, I went to the paper, and it sounded like an excellent robot

(Writing all of this so long after the date just reminds me that I really need to contact John again to ask him for more information about this robot!)

The conference also included excellent plenaries from Helen Small, Frank Close and Steven Connor.

The last day of my trip (not including a day and a bit of travelling to get back to Perth, which I wasn’t looking forward to very much) was spent wandering around Boston.  I had a purposeful morning waiting to get my laptop fixed at the Apple “Genius Bar” (well, I think they’re geniuses, they gave me a new battery in spite of me being just outside my warranty period).  Then I headed back into town and lunched at the Union Oyster House – they claim to be the oldest restaurant in America est. 1826 – on Clam Chowder and corn bread, very nice (if a little chewy).

I wandered around the shops, but wasn’t inspired and then the weather began to set in.  I made it to the aquarium before it started to rain and spent a happy time watching penguins and looking at pretty fish (the ones not being eaten by penguins).  Even here I did have a clear aim to get pictures of some cuttlefish, if they had any.  It turns out that cuttlefish are very hard to photograph because they move pretty quickly.  Here’s one photo that’s actually in focus!

When I got out of the aquarium it was tipping down, but for some reason I decided to walk back to the hotel.  Getting soaked wasn’t a great idea, but it did mean that I got to walk by the original Cheers bar (as opposed to the fake one in the middle of town).  It wasn’t that photogenic, which is just as well, because the rain clouds weren’t going to clear for any photographic work on my part.

After a side trip to New Brunswick to visit a friend I made at last years British Society for Literature and Science conference I travelled back into the US to visit Boston.  My main aim was to visit MIT.  I had an appointment with someone in the Personal Robotics group at MIT Media Lab, and I also wanted to visit the MIT Museum.

I had originally planned to visit Guy Hoffman, designer and builder of AUR the robotic lighting assistant, but unfortunately he ended up being out of the country when I was there (some people will go to any lengths to avoid meeting with me)!   However, Mikey Siegel kindly agreed to talk to me about his work, and to show me around the Media Lab.

It was an interesting tour, and the lab is just as cluttered with boxes and wires as any other I’ve visited.  The only difference in the Personal Robotics section is the large number of cuddly toys that are strewn about the place.  I should have asked if I could take some photos, but for some reason felt a bit awkward about this, as if they were bound to say no.  I did, however, take some in the museum, just so that I could prove I had “met” Kismet and Cog.

I also spent some time just walking around MIT:

Then I headed off to the Harvard end of town, and into the best book store that I have ever visited.  The Harward Book Store shelves are piled high, the staff are helpful and it was packed with browsers.

I know you’re not suppose to do this, or maybe there are no rules for blogging?  I decided to back-post a little just as a means of jogging my memory.

While in Montreal I also had the opportunity to meet with Bill Vorn, who I have mentioned before (very briefly) in this blog.  In particular, I was interested in talking to him about his work on a project called Grace State Machines, but I was really interested to see all of the machines he has made which are scattered about his laboratory at Corncordia.

I really love visiting labs/studios, they’re usually cluttered, with nowhere to sit down, and bits and pieces of metal and wire everywhere.  It’s just great – and I’m really beginning to wonder if I should make my own machines!

I also went back to look at Jessica Field’s work in the museum for a second time.  Jessica had obviously dropped in to fix Clara, because she was much more talkative on my second visit (or maybe she just recognised me from before)?!

Yesterday I went to visit Jessica Field, a Canadian artist/roboticist at her studio in Montréal.

Jessica has been building robots for more than ten years, and has an exhibit in the Communicating Vessels: New Technologies and Contemporary Art exhibition I mentioned in the previous post.  A video of this work, in which three static robots: Alan, Clara, Brad and Daphne interact with one another to “watch” and “discuss” the movements of their visitors.  A video explaining this work is available online.  I went to visit these robots on Tuesday, and again today (Thursday).  I saw Jessica in between, and mentioned that Clara didn’t seem to be saying much.  I suspect that some maintenance work may have taken place, because today both Alan and Clara were working well, and I had fun moving about the space in front of them, in particular moving close to Clara’s “eyes”, which provoked an interesting reaction.  You have to spend time with these robots in order to see how they interact, and the problems that they experience in communicating with one another.  They “see” the world in very different ways, and cannot therefore agree on what is happening around them.

Jessica is now working on a new set of four robots, three of which can move around a sort of robot play-pen.  As far as I am aware these robots do not yet have names, but they do have clearly defined characteristics and different levels of personality.  The static robot reacts to sounds it “hears” with its two ears.  If a sound reaches both ears then it switches on a light while the sound continues.  If it only “hears” with one ear, then it moves around orienting itself to the sound.  One of the moving robots can show either a phototropic or photophobic response, and it moves appropriately.  As it does this is draws a line on the ground.  Another moving robots follows lines it finds on the ground, and when it reaches the end of a line it stops, and “tells” you what it has read with sound.  It then becomes attracted to sound, and will move towards this until it finds another line and reverts to line following.  The third moving robot follows light in a more “intelligent” way than the robot with a hard wired response.  It considers it’s movement, and moves more smoothly.  However, I didn’t see this robot in action as it was in parts on Jessica’s desk!

As you can probably tell from the description above, these four robots are designed to form a robot ecosystem.  They interact with one another, and also, to a certain extent, with their visitors when they follow sound.

Although I took photos of these robots it’s not appropriate for me to post them here.  These robots are Jessica’s work in progress, and are being prepared for exhibit in January.  As Jessica works on the robots she keeps a book of observations.  These include scientific information about the circuit diagrams and programming of the robots, but also textual descriptions, stories and narratives based on her observations of the robots.

These robots are going to be presented in tandem with a video.  This will take the form of what sounds like a “nature programme” about the robots and how they behave.  This video is actually going to overstate what the robots are capable of doing, and Jessica is interested to see how visitors then understand the actual movements and behaviours of the robots in the installation.