"The Blanket Project"- How we Perceive Robot Interaction
The Blanket Project is a "behavioral sculpture" created by Nicholas Stedman, an interactive artist who is currently teaching and studying at the media robotics lab of the University of Buffalo. An ongoing project, it aims to create a fully autonomous robotic blanket that can "navigate through a bedroom or similar environment seeking out people for intimate encounters."
In its current incarnation, the blanket comprises a skeleton of 31 motorized joints held together in a grid by aluminum linkages, all of which allow it to take on many shapes. Through computer control these shapes can be sequenced into patterns and movements that permit locomotion and which enable the blanket to embrace or otherwise stimulate a person. For the time being, these behaviors are randomized and interaction with the device is at the discretion of viewers, who are free to engage it as they deem appropriate (e.g. touching it, lying under it).
The next version will incorporate sensors that will detect touch, motion and pressure allowing the blanket to "perceive" its environment, including the shape of the objects it touches. Eventually, an AI component will be added so that "informed choices can be made based on previous experience."
Stedman says that the blanket simultaneously attracts and repels viewers. He gives a number of reasons for this, including a remembrance of infancy and the transition from the womb to the world of exterior objects. It also represents an "end of things," there is an expectation of life and sex underneath the blanket, but what the viewer finds is no body.
The Blanket Project elicits responses about the ambivalence over our evolving awareness of and interaction with robotized and artificially intelligent objects. These responses suggest that our level of comfort with such artifacts is inversely proportional to the degree of intimacy they solicit.
American consumers, for example, seem quite content with their Roombas (disc-shaped self-directed vacuum cleaners A GeorgiaTech study of Roomba users found that many owners named the robots or assigned them a gender, and that others bought new rugs, pre-cleaned floors and bought new refrigerators to make it easier for the robots to do their work. But Japanese elders seem less that enthused with IFBOT, an 18-inch communication robot that talks, sings, expresses emotions and quizzes them to help maintain their mental agility. The residents of one Kyoto nursing home "lost interest after about a month," according to the facility's director. And the Washington Post recently reported that seniors in Japan are also rejecting care-giving robots and enabling technologies like the automated feeding spoon made by Sanyo.
In short, when it comes to personal contact, we still prefer the human touch. At least for now.
Link:
http://nickstedman.banff.org/blanket.html
Christos Tsirbas
The Blanket Project is a "behavioral sculpture" created by Nicholas Stedman, an interactive artist who is currently teaching and studying at the media robotics lab of the University of Buffalo. An ongoing project, it aims to create a fully autonomous robotic blanket that can "navigate through a bedroom or similar environment seeking out people for intimate encounters."
In its current incarnation, the blanket comprises a skeleton of 31 motorized joints held together in a grid by aluminum linkages, all of which allow it to take on many shapes. Through computer control these shapes can be sequenced into patterns and movements that permit locomotion and which enable the blanket to embrace or otherwise stimulate a person. For the time being, these behaviors are randomized and interaction with the device is at the discretion of viewers, who are free to engage it as they deem appropriate (e.g. touching it, lying under it).
The next version will incorporate sensors that will detect touch, motion and pressure allowing the blanket to "perceive" its environment, including the shape of the objects it touches. Eventually, an AI component will be added so that "informed choices can be made based on previous experience."
Stedman says that the blanket simultaneously attracts and repels viewers. He gives a number of reasons for this, including a remembrance of infancy and the transition from the womb to the world of exterior objects. It also represents an "end of things," there is an expectation of life and sex underneath the blanket, but what the viewer finds is no body.
The Blanket Project elicits responses about the ambivalence over our evolving awareness of and interaction with robotized and artificially intelligent objects. These responses suggest that our level of comfort with such artifacts is inversely proportional to the degree of intimacy they solicit.
American consumers, for example, seem quite content with their Roombas (disc-shaped self-directed vacuum cleaners ). A GeorgiaTech study of Roomba users found that many owners named the robots or assigned them a gender, and that others bought new rugs, pre-cleaned floors and bought new refrigerators to make it easier for the robots to do their work. But Japanese elders seem less that enthused with IFBOT, an 18-inch communication robot that talks, sings, expresses emotions and quizzes them to help maintain their mental agility. The residents of one Kyoto nursing home "lost interest after about a month," according to the facility's director. And the Washington Post recently reported that seniors in Japan are also rejecting care-giving robots and enabling technologies like the automated feeding spoon made by Sanyo.
In short, when it comes to personal contact, we still prefer the human touch. At least for now.
Link:
http://nickstedman.banff.org/blanket.html
Christos Tsirbas
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