Projection Mapping Power!

Probably one of the most powerful demonstrations of projection mapping up to date, the clip 'Box' by Bot&Dolly, shows some novelties in how the technique is used. It's pretty well sequenced, and it involves robots, too! Watch it here:

 

The only criticism is that the end, with its 'Escape' section and the Arthur C. Clarke quote, is based on an illusion: it would seem like a magical dream that technology offers us some kind of existential escape. This escape is an illusion and instead the challenge or invitation -to which technology could also contribute- is to deeply accept our existential condition and venture further into it, rather than using external methods to get out of it. In the end, technology is a mere tool for survival, and this video is mostly just eye-candy of course, it shouldn't be seen as part of some great technological dream (well it's fine if you do but it's an illusion you're buying into which has burdened humanity long enough now). That having been said, this video is still an absolute must-see.

Let's be cyborgs

"Let's go for the future, let's be cyborgs" was the closing statement of professor Kevin Warwick after he talked about his recent explorations in wiring up his nervous system to electronic systems. He had a device with an array of electrodes implanted into the median nerve of his left arm, which allowed his nervous signals to be read electronically. Then, he was able to operate several things remotely by moving his hand. He went on to link his state of arousal to the color of a necklace his wife was wearing, so that she would always know if he was in a calm or excited state. His next step was to also put the electrodes in his wife's arm, and set up a primitive communication system. Whenever one person squeezes their hand, the other person would feel this as pulses inside the brain. This then should be a first step towards direct brain-to-brain communication in order to complement the "pathetic, trivial, serial coded pressure wave form" that speech is, according to Kevin Warwick. Watch the video here:

Robots to guard prisoners

This cute little fellow here is, believe it or not, the start of prisons being run by robots. It is going to be tested in an actual prison in South Korea, where it will assist in keeping an eye on the inmates through various intelligent systems. Especially at nighttime, this may relieve the human guards of their duties, leaving them more room to do things like reading psychology books, doing some prison yoga, or painting pictures of inmates.

It may seem counterintuitive to have such a jolly looking 5-feet tall character guard the scum of our society. But I would like to think of it as the start of a whole new paradigm of treating people who have committed acts that we classify as 'criminal'. Now they are often treated like they have done something 'wrong', according to a system of punishment and reward, not unlike parents treat little children. But this does not work very well for the criminals, because they often have already stepped out of this paradigm of human interaction in the first place. In Jungian terms, they have stopped living as only their persona, and started facing the shadow side of the personality. This confrontation can be very challenging, and when repressions are loosened it is easier to tip over into criminal acts. Seen from this perspective, we can come to understand that many criminals have psychologically taken a step further than people who keep trying to conform to 'normality'.

And that is exactly why people often feel uncomfortable around those who do not repress themselves anymore according to the laws of the world. They are not normal, they are not to be trusted, they are to be feared and avoided. They must be locked away. Not to say that they should not be put in prison -although in a more open and connected society they could probably be monitored without a centralized facility-, but maybe we can start thinking of prison in a positive rather than a negative way. Maybe we can start to think of it as a place to come at rest with yourself, to think things over, to stimulate further growth of the individual. This will also remove that quality of coolness of everything that is against the law, which is almost programmed into us from childhood. The prison of the modern society could become like a retreat in the mountains for those who need it. A place to be cut off from worldly pleasures, a place to find peace, to discover the higher enjoyments of existence, and to meet friendly little robots. These robots can in the end become like Zen teachers; quiet, wise, friendly, simply doing what they do, and knowing their Kung Fu when they need it.

robots and the creative class

The robots are coming, we can't ignore it any longer. The global robot population has tenfolded the last 6 years to a number of around 9 million. They are becoming more human, we are teaching them to play tricks on us, babies have been shown to make no distinction between them and humans, and we are still using them as weapons in countries like Pakistan, where several people have been killed lately through drone attacks. The time is coming where they are massively entering our own homes as helpers such as vacuum cleaners, grass mowers and pool cleaners. Then, I foresee them to also occupy roles in our social world, and this is where humanoid robots will be excellent training tools as friends that do not form opinions and can guide us with our internal emotional, intellectual, and spiritual processes.

How fast the development of robots will go is an almost unpredictable notion in today's complex world, but an almost universally held projection is that robots will be able to beat the world's best soccer team by 2050. The experts differ widely, for example with Ray Kurzweil thinking that around 2029 machines will explode in intelligence -although he seems to not take into account an embodied notion of intelligence- while iRobot's founder Colin Angle is far more reserved, stating that in 10 years we can't really make all that much progress, and that there are a large number of unforeseen complexities to be dealt with that will make things much slower than we predict.

I tend to be more in line with Colin Angle's view. Things will go slow, but I do think that the embodied, communicative, and spatial intelligence required for the 2050 robot soccer champs goal is realistic. Another milestone we should take into account is that of social intelligence. And with that I simply mean the ability of a robot to push the buttons ingrained inside of us through our herd instinct. The milestone would be reached when a robot can sustain a conversation with somebody in 'fun' mode, that occurs often for example when two people who just met go on a date. This, I think, can also be reached by 2050, if innovation develops in the accelerating pace as it is doing now.

Something that is often not taken into account in these business-like projections though is the psychical development of man. Most people do not think in terms of innovation and creativity. A job is a job for them, and innovation a way to make money. When they come home, they go into their comfort zone with sensory pleasures, distractions, and social rituals. But slowly, we people are expanding our own comfort zone to include our creativity. Creation becomes an inherent part of our sense of self and our existence in the world as we shift our mindsets to a passive, consumerist one to an active, existentalistic, and embodied one. Richard Florida talks about the upsurge of a creative class. And it is this creative class that I think will majorly increase innovation.

Not only do companies more and more 'crowdsource' this creative class for cheap input in the form of ideas and concepts, but also more and more people will start their own project just to keep them busy, and share it with the world in an open-source format. For this, you already need an entrepreneurial and independent spirit, that is beyond the comforts of your family and friends.

Take this guy in the movies below, who hacks Roombas for the sake of it. By simply combining the robo-vacuum cleaner with Nintendo input devices, he creates a middle ground between a fully automized vacuum cleaner, and a cumbersome process that requires you to bend, pull, push, and drag. By dividing the embodiment in two systems he removes the hassle and keeps you engaged in the process. All you need now are some visual and sound augmentations to make it seem as if the Roomba is, say, a turtle collecting seashells that are scattered over the beach, which is really your own house.





Sure, the creative class mainly wants to have freedom of exploration and fun. But this too I think is changing. Maybe in the future it will be willing to take on highly specialized and complex development projects, if given freedom and a little bit of money. I think we are underestimating the upcoming of creative thinking as a natural state of being, and how it will affect the world.

Robots craft massive artworks

This impressive installation created by Federico Diaz was not actually created by him. It is a prime example of how robots can empower the artist to delegate his craft to his mechanical workforce, and have them realize his ideas with utmost efficiency and precision. The artist's task here was to pinpoint to the robots the coordinates of each of the 420,000 pixel-balls that make up this piece. He did this by taking pixelvalues from two-dimensional pictures, and translating these values through the virtual laws of fluid dynamics. It gives the installation the feel as if it's a snapshot impression of a nano-suffused future where everything is constantly and organically in motion.

Dutch Design Week '10 - a synopsis

Creativity will be 'flying you around the ears', as the Dutch say, if you are in Eindhoven this week. In case you're not, here's an overview of some of the most noteworthy work.

To start off, we're seeing interesting furniture designs based on the idea of physical transformation. In 'de Krabbendans', a piece with slow, worm-like movement is displayed that consists of several modules, which can autonomously rotate through a crude mechanism based on gears and long wormwheels. The design academy has a table on display with a top that can change its radius through sliding from being a small four-seater table to a larger table. Also there is an impressive couch that consists of a fairly uniform, crystal-like array of thousands of scissor mechanisms which allow the couch to shrink over two dimensions when you push its sides inwards.






In the idea-realm of sustainability, we see some interesting developments. In the 'Designhuis' we see new lighting concepts making use of energy-efficient LEDs. One of these is a birdhouse with LED lighting that is solar-powered. So while you may not be able to afford rooftop solar panels, at least the birds in your garden can now have it. Also at the Designhuis, Philips is showing their OLED technology for lighting applications. The light output is still quite low, but thin and energy-efficient it definitely is. Then there is a carpet with integrated LEDs for decorative purposes, another step in making technology softer. At the design academy we see some attention paid to an environmentally sustainable world, including an architectural work for a housing unit with a huge reflective dish as the roof, which will reflect the sunlight and convert it to energy inside the building.






The idea of technology becoming or merging with biology was scarcely represented this year. There are the far future concepts of the Nanosupermarket, such as Nanowine that changes its taste on command, or a Nanosock that autonomously crawls up your toes, but the lonely spot of immediately practical applications is reserved for a treehouse based on a balloon that you blow up in between its branches. The makers envision a city in tune with its nature, merged with it instead of isolated from it. Another product that loosely fits in this category, but is just too cool in a geeky way to not mention, is the pudding bowl that makes your desserts look like the chilled monkey brains from the Temple of Doom.





The developments in rapid prototyping are presented again by Shapeways, displaying full color and metal-printing, among other options. The price for a self-created golden ring lies around 40 euros, which seems like an impressively affordable price for a nice and personal, though a little less shiny piece of jewelry. At the design academy some ideas are presented on the application of home-based 3D printing, and its societal implications, in the sense that we are now moving towards the true socialist ideal where the masses own the production system. We couldn't take over the centralized manufacturing system, but now at least we can reach the same effect through a decentralized system that everybody carries. In terms of applications, rapid prototyping here is presented as a way to repair things by creating custom components or in-between sections, where you would otherwise have bought an entirely new product. But the other, less sustainable side of it is that now people could print whatever they want whenever they want, which could lead to incredible flows of material that are largely not very useful, such as when we use material to simply display messages. This is a big drawback, still I'm all for it, since at least it puts the creativity, and with that the power, the responsibility, in the hands of the end user. However slow, I think that this does invite personal development towards more intelligent and ethical actions.



The Industrial Design faculty at the Eindhoven University of Technology again presents the harvest of a year full of projects. As an ex-student, I'm coming to find that, the projects of this faculty were always for a large part nice explorations into how technology can solve a problem for somebody but often pretty unmarketable due to the costs of required development, production, and the limited user base. I'm not your business expert, but high technology seems still only profitable when it either is implemented in an already known product group with the production channels already grooved in place, or when the innovation is so groundbreaking as to attract a large new market that will support production. If the technology is not that needed or desired, in other words if masses of people are not lying in bed at night thinking about this stuff, it seems that it simply will not happen. Another part of projects were based on exploring technological innovations, and often this produced projects with a sort of adolescent, techno-slick, urban feel to it, not rarely circled around the concept of having technology construct an identity for you. Out of the large and extremely technodiverse population of projects this faculty has already created, I have come to feel that one segment is particularly groundbreaking, and suited for this faculty. This is the development of new interactions with digital products as a means to innovate. A new interaction can often radically change a product - after all, it's what mostly defines the product in terms of how it impacts our lives - without needing to necessarily change the production system of the product all too radically. It is my guess that in this field, industries will be likely to pick up projects and invest in them, so that it could in the end lead to worldwide distribution of the products coming out of these projects. It is going in the right direction, with this year two projects standing out for me. One is the digital camera designed by David Menting. It has physical controls that directly correlate to the digital controls of photography parameters such as shuttertime and ISO settings. By connecting a control to one parameter in a more or less natural and always direct way, the user becomes linked to the digital world with the body, which in my eyes is crucial if we want to develop clear, understandable, and natural technologies. Another interesting project is the high-end faucet by Jasper Dekker based on gesture interaction. The exhibition has working prototypes, so by all means go take a look and feel.




This leads me to mention that one strand of development is just not seen in the design world of Europe. Japan is full of it, and America has their take on it, now where is Europe? I am talking about robotics. Not just because I have a personal sentiment for it, but simply because I think that within Europe are mostly people with mindsets that differ on crucial points from North Americans and East Asians. And this could expand the robotics field significantly. A quickly modernized Japan has put its faith in the development of technology, so that's why we are seeing their fancy humanoids that are becoming more and more lifelike. They are a little reserved in general, but now robots can do their physical entertainment such as dancing and singing, too. Americans think in general that this is rather silly and creepy. They, being protective and family-driven, focus more on people, so they are building social robots, as well as an army of (semi-)autonomous war robots. What Europe mostly is good at are two things that in the best cases hang together: reason and art. Europe can focus on creating ethical robots, that could point out certain things to people, or just try to do good and learn things through action. It could also focus on developing creative robots, that show people that in becoming creative, we can lift ourselves from a purely self-centered or social life. I think this needs to start, and in the next years we at least need to see some ideas over here for potentially successful applications.

The technological forest

The forest, like almost no other environment, can immerse and ground you and your mind up to the comfort of an unborn baby in the womb. Technology these days, on the other hand, is mostly distractive, and sends us all over the place. Could one day even the realm of the forest become one with technology?

The new-age group AUJIK has this dream, and visualizes it in beautiful ways using extraordinary computer generated images. To them, according to the animistic Shinto belief, all technology is alive, just like nature is. They even view technology as the refined, ordered form of the intrinsically chaotic nature that we originally came out of. Technology then, is nature's way to understand itself.

In their videos, we see wonderful shots of object-creatures full of character, that seem to have outevolved the coldness or techno-sexiness of their early robotic ancestors, and now have developed a natural, organic beauty of their own. But it's not the kind of ethereal image of beauty that we often picture when we think of the word 'nature'. It's not the kind of idealistic beauty that leads us away from the everyday world. This beauty is a beauty of the real world, and thus we see complex, breathing structures within parking garages, and metal contraptions that seem very refined, yet also normal, as if we could see one standing in a children's playground among all the other structures.

See for yourself:









In becoming more natural, technology will calm down our minds, and show us that indeed we can create the kind of beauty that we once lived in ourselves. Then, the circle will have been completed, we will have become gods, having connected our heads to our hearts, and intrinsically interlinked ourselves with the whole of existence by finally fully making the outside the inside, and the inside the outside. And then we can forget that tense state of being we were once in when we still thought that we were separate.

Robot that tries clothes for you

Did you ever order, say, a dress, online that ripped in half as soon as you tried it on? The solution is nigh, as the web-based company Fits.Me has developed a shape-changing robotic manikin that can morph into your body size and try the clothes out for you before you buy them. Thanks to this technology, clothing retailers can send in their clothing for the robot to try it all on with various body sizes, after which customers can enter their body measurements and have the clothes shown in the way that they would look if they would be wearing them.

The guy that presents his company in the following video seems to have a fetish-like obsession for his work, and watching a robotic system change shape is always interesting, so don't miss it:

Robotics meets furniture design

The first steps towards robotic products are being taken, also at Lausanne Polytechnique. Researchers there are investigating how robotics can be applied to make furniture move by itself, change shape according to the situation, and repair itself.

So far, they've come up with an ingenious module that can rotate around multiple axes, and can connect to other modules. By combining these robotic modules with static elements, then, they can create a walking table, a shape-changing ottoman, or a chair that assembles itself. Their simulations so far are more impressive than the actual hardware they've built, but I hope to see that table that runs away from you in real life at a furniture or design fair someday soon.

Electric toy butterfly

This artificial butterfly does an impressive job on looking so much like the real thing that it might actually prevent children to go out and do their form of animal cruelty. It responds to vibrations by flapping its wings and is powered by 3 AA batteries. Replacing nature is not cheap though: the electric butterfly will cost you 100 US dollars, including shipping.

And the robots celebrate

The era of the robot has begun, The Netherlands are in the semi-finals of the World Cup, what's not to celebrate?

This epic robot performance is a must-watch for anyone at least somewhat interested in the interspersion of robots into our lives. There are some pretty subtle and exquisite moves these robots are doing with an extreme 'sense' of balance. What's especially confusing is that the robots can change their arms so that their back looks like their front. Then again, we just have to get used to robots getting physically superior to us.

Robotic miniblimps

And a soft female voice speaks with a lovely techno-optimistic undertone: "It flies, filling the sky with colorful light, and produces diverse styles of performance in the air"

This interactive airballoon is called 'Beatfly', and was created by Hideki Yoshimoto. as an open-source project based on the Arduino platform.

Robot weds Japanese couple

Who needs a human priest when you can have a robot instead?

a high-tech bank visit in Santander; autonomous robots, information decoration, and augmented reality

Ciudad Group Santander has enhanced the visitors center of a bank with state of the art interactive technologies. Interactive displays will enter a dialogue with the visitor to prompt him about his intentions. Then, one of a swarm of red robots that look not unlike shelled sea creatures will come up to the visitor and guide him to his destination. Another highlight is a model of Santander's financial city with movable screens on the side of it. Sliding these screens across the model will reveal specific information about the space behind the screen at its current position. Check out the movie below.

my robot lover

Check out Franz Steiner astonishingly artificially lifelike images depicting a borderless intimacy between woman and machine. I truly think it is only a matter of time before robots come to play a vital part in people's, say, exploratory phases.

you can be a robot, but you'll still be you

If you've seen the recent movie 'Surrogates', where Bruce Willis lives his life through an idealized version of his own body called a surrogate, and you think this to be purely speculative science fiction, maybe your view changes after viewing the latest prototype of Anybots. This company produces telepresence robots through which you can be present anywhere and "enjoy complete freedom to move fluidly and interact with others in a remote location from the ease of your home or office."

Omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, from the comfort of our lazy chair, is that really what we want? While such technology can help us reach temporarily more satisfactory states of being, I think it should be used with great care and awareness of what one is essentially doing: ignoring the own body, abstracting one's embodied existence and fragmenting one's consciousness. While we seem to need temporary comforts, I am convinced that we should remain aware that there is a happiness beyond comfort, and that life is a progressive learning to connect to this form of happiness. A happiness that you could call sublime or even divine.

In my experience, happiness can only be reached by transcending the boundaries of the self and its preferences, and constantly connecting to one's personal challenges, seeing how every moment connects to that project of the self, making it more and more in tune with the environment. Where comfort is one option, the other option is to immerse oneself in activities that make one grow as the craftsman of one's own perceptions. Whereas distractions like social interactions are easy to live by, there is always more to do: mastering the art of life. If we truly see ourselves as cosmic artists, already allknowing, allperceiving, allexperiencing and allbeing, we ultimately see that happiness lies in immersion in fully embodied action. I feel that only when we live as fully embodied beings, technology being an intrinsic part of us that we are always mastering in full connection, that we can truly calm down our consciousness and live a blissful life.

I see telepresence robots as a great development, especially when the focus will more and more be on a richer bodily connection, so the entire mind and body become involved. But more than that, people using another body should be kept aware of their own biologically given body and live in tune with that. Technology can play the role of an abstractor and enhancer, but it should also always have the larger role of a personal guide through life. Now is the time that we need to face away from capitalism, and start developing technology from a true shared vision of human happiness, so people will not get tricked into adopting technologies that they think will make them happy, while being blinded to what it actually does to their lives from a holistic point of view.

rise of the river robots

There we go, robot armies are already being developed, but now our seas and rivers are also going to be the homes of robots with autonomous navigation capabilities. Apparently, British scientists want to release robots that resemble fish into the sea near Spain. These machines would be able to detect pollution, so basically it's a moving sensor with the mask of a sophisticated organism.

This way, robots are again a quick and easy solution to something that should be tackled preventively. Throw in some technology, that'll do. Sure. It's adding up quickly if you ask me. I feel that in a way, robots could become the punishment we create for ourselves because we can't live in tune with our world as a whole. We try to stick patch after patch onto nature, but we really need to look inside of ourselves and learn to accept it with all its unpredictabilities, become open-minded to the all-transcendent wisdom pervading it, and with our newly acquired consciousness try to uplift it by catalyzing its own flow.

the evolution of technology

So, what if life had started by the self-organization of metal particles rather than proteins? Would an android indeed have emerged, consequently creating technologies from organic molecules? Well maybe it does not matter that much, as similar to when matter would have been called antimatter had we been intrinsically antimaterial beings, probably technology would have been called biology had we been intrinsically technological beings. Enjoy the video above, created for electronics concern Saturn.

the frustrated beasts of today

Now what are the real animals of today? This interesting ad for a campaign by Rainforest Foundation Oro Verde is striking in showing how biology is changing nowadays.

Suddenly you start viewing these technological monsters in a human way, portraying destructive behaviour because of an inner frustration for not having a nice, natural environment of their own. Every time we anthropo- or zoomorphize objects (including perceptual patterns we classify as people and animals themselves!), it's nothing but a projection anyway, rendering this view of technology quite legitimate I think. The machines could also be seen as a delusional, delirious form of predators, trying to eat everything without finding anything they can digest.

And yes, that six-legged insectoid crane exists. It's developed by John Deere. The future of mobility technology will probably move more and more towards walkers to get us out of our rigid, linear, gridlike infrastructure.

Dr. Pekoppa to the rescue

Sometimes the only thing you need is someone, or something, that listens to you and understands you in an intuitive way. Something that just responds minimally and does not talk back. As most partners do not fulfill this requirement, the Japanese at SegaToys filled this gap in the market by introducing for once not a robotic fembot, fish or chick, but a cute little plant called Pekoppa.

This wiggly artefact moves its stem and leaves in a surprisingly expressive way, and because it's shape and movements are so ambiguous it gives people all the space to create their own narrative around this artificial plant, especially because it actually reacts to human voices. The following movie mainly shows some Japanese people getting things of their chest with this little healer, but some simply seem to have a nice social conversation with it, or decide to sing a song for it.



It is interesting that this 'device' is marketed under the nickname 'Healing Leafs', and I strongly believe that such developments can have significant psychological impact on society. It is maybe not very noticeable, but humanity is undergoing an enormous psychological crisis, desperately labeling any anomaly as yet another disorder, and rates of suicides, addiction, and depression are staggering. We lost a connection to our selves, are distracted by all sorts of fairly meaningless chunks of data and abstract goals imposed upon us mainly by the mirror of the media, and society, and I believe strongly that technologies can help us reconnect and have us reflect more, in a playful, empowering, and motivating way.