This could go on forever. String-artist Mari Kimura set up a system, some kind of Guitar Bot, that produces very odd sounds. The bot is triggered by the Violin play of Mari Kimura, while the sound is produced by guitar-like mechanics. Computer algorithms react to the sounds of the environment and by exact rules. The pitch of the four string-robots are shifted accordingly, but separate from each other, varied by moving bars. This sounds very like bending a string instrument, while it is playing. The bot is keeping its tones and motions - unique and shivering. While she is playing with the violin.
Behind the white box, there is a Mac and an audio interface. I am running a software MaxMSP, which is LISTENING to the pitch. loudness and the timing of the violin. The ‘patch’ I created in Max contains certain interactive instructions such as "listen to the E (highest open string on the violin)". For example in the beginning, if you listen carefully you notice when I play above E, it stops. Interactions change in predetermined time frames.
We are still at the beginning of an uprising robot culture, but there are already people who declare a "War against Robots". Ok. That's not really true. To be more precise: To defend against robots, just in the case of...
A man called Ben Way founded a security company to defend against hostile robots. The UK-based company "Weapons against Robots" has two concepts of defending. That is "Autonomous-Against-Autonomous (AAA)" and "Biological-Against-Autonomous (BAA)" They say, that they already research into the direction of a "Microwave-Bomb" with the ability erases electronic circuits. Let's hope that we will never face a future like this. But don't you also think, that the guys are really early on the market?
Did you already met this robots? A new breed of small scale robots is coming upon us. We have to get serious about living with robots real soon...
A Japanese manufacturer with the name Murata build this robots, that can ride bicycle, as well as unicycle. Official site here, additional information at Pink Tentacle.
When we already are on the topic about tiny humanoids, that do things normally humans do, than also notice this wonderful art-bot. The "Portraitist" Salvador DaBot is a robot with face recognition and the ability to draw faces as portrait with a pencil on paper. It was made by the Swiss robot artist and researcher Silvain Calignon. This here is the 2.0 version of the robot, and besides nice chat abilities it got a mustache an beret update. Meanwhile the "Portraitist" Salvador DaBot got a nice collection of works!
Toy-Robots are beginning to get serious. The Spykee is a WiFi-enabled robot, that you can control via remote. It has a build in camera. You can "see with the robot-eyes" and "head with the robot-ears", while you control that boy. You can also videophone with the robot, because it has got a full-grown interface to the Skype VOIP-Protocol. In other words: this robot is also a remote controlled videophone. The sugar on top is, that you can use Spykee also as a music device, because he should be able to play music from your computer via WiFi.
See some hands-on at this blog. The inofficial website is located at spykee.org, whey they collect wisdom and also some homebrew-stuff. You can find a chess-playing Spykee there at the moment. The official Spykee-Website is a little bit like, well, like those flashy-toy websites. A review with a full feature list is available at RobotsRule. Unfortunatelly that robot is not cheap. It should cost about 200 Pounds, so expect the price to be about 250 Euro.
Are you ready for some of the most unusual research? British scientists set up a spider-robot, that only exercise is to shock and traumatize bees. The researches had explored the effect, that traumatic experiences have on bumble bees.
Shock-Robot "Spider in Disguise"
The "spider in disguise" machine, that you can see on the picture, was used to attract bumble bees (smells good, looks flowery). When the came too near to the machine, the two robotic-arms hit together and gave the bee some really shocking event and set them in panic. After some pretty good shocks the bumble bees began to avoid the spider-machine.
The researchers were more interested in the after-effects of the shock-therapy. They came up with the result, that traumatized bees were changing their collection habits. The were generally slower that their colleges without the stress exposed to. The bees were acting nervous and distracted and learned, that some robot-spiders in disguise could lurk anywhere...
Please don't build such machines!! I guess this thing was only made once for research purposes. Read the whole story at Science News.
Robovox is a large, eight meter high public sound- and robotinstallation. You can send text-messages to the two large robots. They will read, or better speak, your text messages. Just to remember: 8 meter high robots! This is really impressing.
The robots are on tour all mostly within European metropolitan area,making station at Rotterdam, Berlin, Helsinki, Barcelona, Paris, New York, Ljubljana.
Listen to the robotvoice!
Martin B. Bricelj want to "give people a voice, that usually gets lost in the sounds of the mass". The places Bricelj choose have also "social or even political connotation" in his words.
The SMS send to the robots are processed and than spoken out loud by the robots. It is a public monument, but also sound design for public squares. The robot voice is at the same time beeing streamed into the internet. You can head over to the website and plug into the soundstream of the actual robots, or just click play in the black box above. The soundtrack is also available, as well as a book and DVD with essays, documentation and research work.
Robovox was initiated by media artist Martin B. Bricelj. The use of SMS to interact with gigantic objects reminds me on the legendary public art installation of Blinkenlights from the German Chaos Computer Club some years ago. While Blinkenlights was more some "proof-of-concept", aimed at lange scale pleasure (at least in my eyes), the Robovox has another connotation - of course, not only by the picture of robots, that marks a new era about to come.
Here we have an impressive demonstration of what robotic-based art can be. A robot throws paintballs on a canvas. The demonstration includes a "Hello World" with a smiling-face. The next demonstration is somewhat the "Advanced Hello World 2.0". The robot throws the Mona Lisa on the canvas with the blink of an eye. Don't stand in the line... Mona Lisa looks funny and really let me think on pixels...
Update: The painting only should have taken 80 milliseconds.
This weblog is dedicated to fresh and alternate views on robotics. We will focus especially in music robots, toy robots, play and game and robots as well as the culture of robots. We are the the first robot-blog from Germany - and maybe from Europe - that write regularly on this topic! This blog is made by the same people around the Digital Tools Magazine. We will have some nice surprises later this year, so stay tuned!
