Exercise: Research Study (in multiple parts)

Everything we create builds on the accomplishments of our predecessors. The more we know of prior work, the more resources and ideas we can bring to bear on our own objectives. The study of related work also provides opportunities to acknowledge, respect, and critique previous efforts. In this exercise you will choose a potential project idea as a topic of study and investigate related work in both art and technology.

Objectives

  1. Identify the abstract artistic questions raised by a project idea.

  2. Identify key technological questions which could resolve the idea.

  3. Locate related art or design projects.

  4. Locate existing technical research.

  5. Iteratively read related work and synthesize possible solutions.

Part A: Formulating the idea and questions

  1. The first step is identifying a potential project idea of personal interest. Your obligation to this idea will be to research related work and develop solution approaches. So it should be artistically and technically plausible, but does not need to fit within the resource limitations of the course.

    There are many possible sources:

    • You may already have a specific idea in mind.

    • You may be inspired by any existing project we’ve reviewed.

    • You may have a question you’d like to resolve.

  2. Write a one-paragraph synopsis of your project idea. A good model would be a gallery statement; please include a brief description of the physical work and a statement of the overall concept or artistic objectives.

  3. Locate one or more related art or design projects on similar themes.

  4. Locate one or more technical research papers which address the technological aspects.

  5. Deliverables: write a short blog post with your results and be prepared to make brief comments in class.

Part B: Means and Methods

Robotics is primarily a science of means and methods 1. It may inspire an artistic premise, but is more likely to contribute to implementation and execution.

The next stage of this study is identifying specific technical experiments which represent the first steps toward implementing the artistic or design idea you described in Part A. Even replicating an existing result from literature is likely to proceed in stages to order to solve design problems and develop the technique within our specific circumstances. This assignmment may still be considered a design study as you are not committed yet to a specific project or group.

There are two key objectives:

  1. identifying the essential requirements for a physical device which answers the creative goals

  2. identifying the critical path of technical problems required to implement the device

Ideally, the technical means and methods of a project specifically inform the creative premise and are not simply a medium.

Creative Requirements

Satisfying creative goals may require more interrogation of the essential idea. At this point, more specificity will help focus the process. So please think carefully about the following prompts, considering that not all will apply to your specific idea:

  • What are the essential movements?

  • What is the tempo, pace, or speed for each movement?

  • How many control channels are needed?

  • What is the overall size or scale?

  • What is visual design language?

  • What specific materials, colors, or textures are essential to convey the idea?

You may find in the course of your thinking that you wish to revise your project premise. This is perfectly fine, but please pause and write a new carefully revised project statement. In your write up, please identify the specific insight which led to the revision.

Technical Critical Path

The critical path is the longest chain of essential milestones in a project plan, representing the rate-limiting sequence of goals. In a research project, the plan is always contingent since unknown problems or discoveries may trigger a significant pivot. Please note the constrast to a development project which seeks an efficient path using well-understood processes to achieve a goal reliably.

So please think carefully about the following prompts, considering that not all will apply to your specific idea:

  • What is the simplest version of the system which can address the creative goals?

  • What are all the components of the overall system? E.g. this may include elements of structure, actuation, power, sensing, computation, algorithm.

  • Are there rigid or mechanical parts in addition to soft materials?

  • Which specific components will be hardest to fabricate? What specific techniques might be included?

  • Which specific components will be hardest to design? What specific design methodology will be needed?

Proof-of-concept

With that in mind, please choose the most productive first step toward realizing the system, and describe the first proof-of-concept experiment you could run.

  • What is the goal?

  • What materials or processes are required?

  • What kind of scaffolding is require to test the result?

Literature

You are likely to need to review your related literature in more detail. It may take some study to fully appreciate the design methodology or fabrication processes. This is also an opportunity to immerse yourself in the specific discourse of the area, the unspoken assumptions, and the consensus on questions of interest.

Deliverables

Please write a blog post with your revised project statement, a synopsis of creative requirements, a discussion of the critical path, and a description of a useful proof-of-concept. Please include sketches or images to support the description.

Please be sure to include the citations for the works still relevant to the goals.

1

Classifying the study of robotics as means and methods is not intended to diminish the broader results. The field has certainly contributed toward answering foundational questions in sciences from mathematics to psychology. So the field does include investigation of fundamental truths, but historically it is an engineering discipline and on the whole, the bulk of published results appear to answer questions regarding how to construct systems which achieve desired results.