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Reviewer biography
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Biorobotics: Methods and Applications by Barbara Webb & Thomas R. Consi (eds.) Beyond Webcams: An Introduction to Online Robots by Ken Goldberg and Roland Siegwart (eds.) Reviewed by Stephen Wilson Robotics is a growing field within the tech arts community. As computer technology grows more mature, there is increasing interest in the intersections between the physical and cyberworlds. Artists are creating installations that sense actions by physical beings moving in physical paces and cause actions by physical devices. Theorists in the last decades have attempted to explicate the power of the virtual world to dominate perception and thought and to decrease the importance of the physical world. As information technology becomes more capable of sensing and acting in the physical world it is no wonder that artists would be intrigued by the challenge of unraveling the relationship between the cyber and material worlds. Robotics is the place in the technology and scientific research world where these questions are addressed. Activity has picked up in the last years with researchers addressing many interesting issues: miniaturization, new kinds of motion, smart sensors, new kinds of approaches to robotic cognition such as artificial life and subsumption, bottom-up techniques. This research is a critical resource for artists - both in its elaboration of techniques that can be appropriated and its identification of theoretical issues important for cultural analysis. Biorobotics: Methods and Applications is a collection of presentations made at the 1998 American Association for Artificial Intelligence Symposium on "Robots and Biology: Developing Connections". It convened frontier researchers in the emerging field of biorobotics - "a new multidisciplinary field that encompasses the dual uses of biorobotics as tools for biologists studying animal behavior and as testbeds for the study and evaluation of biological algorithms for potential applications to engineering." The book is divided into three major sections: Sensory Systems, Motor Systems, and Cognitive Systems. Some of the topics the chapters addressed include: Building robot navigation systems based on the understanding the way crickets use sound to move through the world; Creating navigation systems based on chemical detection similar to systems used by marine animals such as lobsters; Building motion systems based on understanding of cockroach legs; and Investigation of embodiment as a key determinant of cognition. Most of the articles are clearly written without extensive jargon and easily understood by the educated layperson. This body of research is a provocative resource for thinking about artistic robotic experimentation. The fact that much biorobotics research is funded by DARPA (defence advanced research projects administration) suggests an array of cultural implications to explore. Beyond Webcams: An Introduction to Online Robots surveys another increasingly important area of robotics in which robots are controlled at remote distances via networks such as the Internet. Ken Goldberg is a professor of robotics at UC Berkeley and also an internationally recognized artist known for his telerobotic installations such as the Telegarden. Roland Siegwart is professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Beyond Webcams offers 18 articles divided into topical sections on Remote Manipulation, Remote Mobility, Remote Control and Time Delay, and Other Novel Applications. The publicity describes its coverage: "robots that navigate undersea, drive on Mars, visit museums, float in blimps, handle protein crystals, paint pictures, and hold human hands." It includes information on how the systems were designed, how they function, and what engineering challenges they confronted. The collection is interesting -- stretching from very practical engineering treatises on the unique problems of sensors and actuators activated at a distance to descriptions of projects undertaken by artists and other kinds of researchers -- for example, descriptions of a project to allow Internet visitors to navigate a museum collection. Again, Internet robotics is a provocative area for artistic exploration. The articles provide rich ideas for topics to explore and engineering issues that might serve as an artistic focus such as the latency (time delay) that accompanies remote robotics. Goldberg and Siegwart should be commended on the range of articles included. Unhappily, however, there is not much philsophical reflection in the book. Readers will need to consult Goldberg's marvelous other book, Robot in the Garden (MIT Press,2000) which brings together scientists, philosophers and artists to reflect on telepresence. Also missing is mention of some of the extraordinary artistic experiments in telerobotics such as Survival Research Lab's "Lethal Weapon" work in which Internet visitors could launch dangerous projectiles and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's "Vectorial Elevation" that allowed visitors to control spotlights over Mexico City. Both books are highly recommended for those interested in emerging research in robotics.
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