I really liked Ying’s final project proposal, with the shadow of one robot influencing the actions of another. The inquiry being explored with that exhibit is if an abnormal action by one robot would either inspire the other robots to individualize their own actions or induce a follow-the-leader effect and cause them to mimic the abnormal robot. I believe that the exhibit acts as an analogy for people responding to the pressure of societal norms and how trends are created.

My concern with the visual element of this piece would be how to distinguish the abnormal robot. Because of the layout in a circular/square format, not all of the robots will be visible to the audience at any one time. I would be concerned that the meaning behind the piece would not be conveyed if an audience member just happened to never see the leading robot, and therefore how the changes/reactions in interactions are generated.

To test this proposal, in the interest of time and efficiency, I would use all four of the robots that we currently have and arrange them in the layout described in Ying’s proposal. Using this approach, we’d be able to quickly prototype the general layout and lighting. We may find configurations or sizing constraints that would be better-suited to this particular exhibit, which could inform the design of new robots specifically for this proposal.

After designing new robots based on what we learned in prototyping the layout, we can start to program what the interactions would look like. In the beginning, I think that the robot should be clearly interacting with the shadow to signal that each entity is seen as its own character in that specific section. After that is demonstrated, I think it would then be appropriate to program more coordinated behaviors among the robots.

I think the most difficult technical element would be the coordination and tuning of the timing between the robots to convey a sense of unity and interaction. A potential solution to this would be to just prototype some times/sequences between only two robots and then apply what we learned from that to the entire exhibit.