Artistic Objectives: With this performance, I’m looking to see how a sense of mystery can be created with a robot that cannot be directly viewed. I’m interested in developing a robot that, when not viewed, moves and produces sounds and other artifacts that can be perceived but not seen. When being viewed, the robot ceases its actuated movement, but artifacts of that actuation persist and can be seen by the audience.

With this second phase, I was really looking to see how these secondary aspects of the actuation could be perceived. I focused on adding sound to the simulation (which unfortunately didn’t translate to the video Webots exported), and to improving the movement artifacts of the actuation. In this new version, I added an actuated arm that hits around an object, causing it to wobble. The viewer can hear the motors in the actuated arm moving and the arm hitting the object, but when they see the robot, the arm is motionless and all they can see is the object wobbling.

I also focused on how the robot is being viewed. Instead of just having the viewer spin around, I instead put the robot behind a wall that the viewer looks around the corner of. This provides a better, more realistic sense of space than the previous attempt, and also potentially translates better to something that could be created as a real physical experience.

Based on this simulation, I would probably build a physical system within an exhibition space that includes a wall with a small door or window to view through. The robot and the object it is hitting would be behind the wall and would have some sort of body tracking technology (such as a kinect). The robot would still consist of an arm that slaps the object and an object that can wobble, either by having a heavily weighted round base or by being attached to the ground with a spring.