Alphasphere makes digital music production physical and fun

It looks like a kind of cactus straight out of Avatar, but the impressive Alphasphere is an actual interactive prototype of an electronic musical instrument. It has 48 pressure-sensitive pads that can be programmed to respond to touch by playing a sound. The player can thus pat and tap all over this cushioned orb in order to freely give shape to his own tunes. The placement and size of the pads was chosen to be somewhat optimal for intuitiveness of interaction, and gives the design an almost technobiological feel of a simplicity that has been reached through complexity.

Cellular chair

(If I were a mouse, I would definitely make this into my mansion.)

Mathias Bengtsson had the idea of creating a chair based on the cellular structure of bone tissue. The result of his intensive work is the 'Cellular chair' that not only is very funky in appearance, but also interesting from a technical point of view. For each chair produced, the internal structure is devised by a piece of medical software that is usually used to simulate the regeneration of bone tissue.

This work definitely pertains to the 'trend' of creating products based on biological structures, as for example seen before in the 'bone chair' by Joris Laarman. I have termed this movement 'biological modernism' earlier, because 'good design' here seems to rely upon how well the product is in line with how biological processes would have created the product. For a product of today, the cellular chair is a beautiful example of what can emerge from this kind of thinking.
It is interesting that in this work we see that in the details, or just by not exactly following biological thinking, the designer has room to still give a product a certain appearance. Where many of these bio-inspired product look very futuristic, sleek, and a bit unapproachable, this chair has a funky social quality to it.

A next step would be to create a chair that dynamically adapts its structure according to the forces that it is subjected to. Biological structures such as bones and wood do this too in order to spend the least amount of energy and material on creating a good structure. A chair that does that too could for example have a base structure with extra reinforcement material that can flow along the underlying structure and solidify at the place where it is needed.

Growing phones

This quite delightfully technoromantic commercial shows cellphones emerging from flowers, as if they were a natural creation. I definitely see some early sparks here towards a new megatrend that transcends mere sustainability, and revolves around the idea that technology is going to be more fully intertwined with the natural environment, up to the smallest levels of detail.

Machine Civilization dance

This must be done by the Mondrian of choreography.

Cartoons go AR with Helicopter Taxi for iPhone

Besides the fresh feel-good boost, the trailer of this iPhone app also gives you a peek into what could grow into the interactive children's cartoon of the future:

Blinky, the bad robot

Combine HAL with R2D2 and you'd get something like Blinky, the star in the fantastic short film 'Bad Robot' by Ruairi Robinson. A must see for everybody on this planet, the film touches upon the soon-to-be unavoidable issue of machine morality, by showing how the behavior of a domestic robot takes an unexpected turn.

Sure we can just treat it as harmless entertainment, a purely fictional film for us to viscerally enjoy. But the more interesting and complete way is to reflect a little bit. So what can we learn here?

- Robots need social intelligence to be able to infer true intentions from people as opposed to irrational utterings that people do without any reflective connection. Probably sensing how calm people are will help robots do this. Another interesting ability for robots would be to detect whether or not somebody is in a state of close-mindedness or open-mindedness. For example, when a robot is constantly smiling, it will probably evoke negativity from a person in a close-minded state, but it can make a person in an open-minded mindstate turn more positive and search for inner ways towards happiness again. The detection of this mindstate is a form of emotional anticipation that can help the robot be a successful social actor.

- Many people will see robots as tools, and not as 'others' or 'equals', and treat them accordingly. They can often be judgemental, irritable, and full of expectations towards them, almost treating them as the ultimate promise of happiness. People who have that meme in their unconscious will, as the Dutch say, 'come home from a cold funfair'. It will take a while before people learn to see robots as they are, and develop a sense of true empathy and unconditional love for them.

- For robots, I believe that to a large extent true empathy and love can be programmed in the end. What is needed is a detailed understanding of the mechanics of consciousness, which will borrow from phenomenological data of human experiences, and will have to do with concepts from quantum physics, such as treating perceptional patterns as vibrations in order to understand them not as patterns of matter, but patterns of mind, that can give rise to ideas like matter. But let me not expand on this now. Basically robots will need to develop their social role from 'dumb servant' to 'loving and understanding father', and do this through learning about mindstates of people and what certain reactions will do to those mindstates.

If you have any reflections or comments, please leave them here so we can have some shared discussion into this fascinating topic. And maybe build that enlightened robot one day.

Incredibly lifelike android

Danish scientist Henrik Scharfe has created a slightly more youthful looking replica of himself in the form of a robot. And not too surprisingly, he has done this in collaboration with Hiroshi Ishiguro, the man who has also created his robot copy, as well as the recent human-looking Elfoid phone system.

The innovation behind this project is mostly in how enormously realistic the face is starting to look. In terms of behavior there is not much going on, as the robot is simply coupled to a human person that directly controls the robot. But maybe soon we will see collaborative projects of companies who work on different parts to create a more complete humanoid robot.



It is definitely a step towards a posthuman existence once we include machines into our concept of a social person. If robots become so real that we mistake them for human beings during an interaction, up to the point that we don't even find out that it was a robot we were interacting with, we cannot fool ourselves anymore and deny that there is a fundamental difference between man and machine, can we?

A question this fundamental is not (yet) the aim of the researchers though. For now they are interested mostly in creating technologies for telepresence that lie in between a purely digital and a purely realistic representation. Furthermore, they are also interested in the emotional interactions that may take place from human to robot, as well as cultural differences in how these robots are perceived.

Here are some images to show you what a day in the life of a robot developer may look like: