Robytes
UAV ready to begin an Antarctic mission.
Photo courtesy of British Antarctic Survey.
landing are under radio control, but
the rest of the flight is autonomous.
Major hurdles included figuring out
how to keep the batteries operating
in the extremely cold temperatures
and how to operate the little joystick
while wearing thick mittens. BAS
scientists see this as a great way to
study remote areas that cannot be
reached efficiently by ships or
manned aircraft. According to a
representative, “UAVs allow scientists
to reach the parts others cannot
reach — the future of much
atmospheric research will be robotic.”
A Kuka industrial robot takes a
whack at generating philosophy.
Photo courtesy of Robotlab.
Robot-Generated Manifestos
According to World Robotics
( www.worldrobotics.org), 951,000
industrial robots were at work as of
2007, but relatively few of us common
folks get a chance to see and interact
with them in an up-close and personal
way. This annoys Germany’s Robotlab
( www.robotlab.de) tech artists, so
their manifesto is to create creative,
experimental exhibitions in public places.
In this way, the bots’ appearance,
movements, and sounds can be
interpreted individually by the viewer
and “evoke ideas which may lay in the
field of practical purposes, as well as
formulate a Utopian image of a future
culture with man and machine.”
Toward that end, Robotlab recently
programmed a Kuka unit to write
its own manifestos, which consist
of eight autonomously generated
statements followed by a serial number/
signature. Because the machine draws
words at random out of an “internal
information pool” and drops them into
a sentence structure, they make even
less sense than Robotlab’s aforementioned expression of purpose. The
statements are written in German,
but a few loose translations are: “The
apparatus becomes the composition,
which makes a shift.” “The sublimation
is subjective.” “From the chip comes
out data flow, pouring into the
collage.” “Sauerkraut drips into
Immanuel Kant’s lederhosen, making
him sterile.” Okay, I made up the last
one myself, but it’s pretty good. SV
10 SERVO 06.2008
