Robots are programmed with traits such as impatience and confidence in an installation by designer Madeline Gannon, whose work explores the potential for humans and machines to live harmoniously.
Gannon – who last year charmed visitors to the London Design Museum with Mimus, an industrial robot that played with passers-by like it was a 1200-kilogram puppy – worked with 10 robots for the new installation, titled Manus.
This time the machines, standard ABB IRB1200 -5/0.9 industrial robot arms, act like pack animals. Lined up in a row and controlled by one central "brain", they move as people walk in front of them, each robot with its own idiosyncrasies.
Gannon programmed robots with traits such as impatience and confidence in her installation"The robots in Manus don't look like and they don't act like us – but they can still connect with us in meaningful ways," said Gannon, who has a PhD in computational design from Carnegie Mellon University and co-heads the independent research studio Atonaton. "Subtle things like their posture, their motion or even the sound of their motor can all be harnessed to build a body language that can better communicate with the people around them," she explains in a video.
"When a group of robots are imbued with these behaviours, they begin to feel less like manufacturing equipment and more like a pack of mechanical creatures, each with their own personality and quirks."
The robots move a...