Robot Living

ArtBots 2011 is about to begin in Ghent, Belgium.  The show is being organized by timelab, a cool looking maker space.  Artbots is a yearly robot talent show featuring international artists. The following artists and their robots will be appearing at ArtBots this year.

 The Voice Extruder with Ranjit Bhatnagar
(USA), Noisolation Headphones with Alex Braidwood (USA), Jurema Action
Plant with Ivan Henriques (BR), Unrund with Korinna Lindinger (AT),
Korn with Logos (B), Acquired Knowledge with Alexander Reben, SADbot
with Dustyn Roberts en Ben Leduc Mills (USA), Steadystate V2 with Shahar
Zaks (USA).

Wile all the robots look very interesting, our favorite robot this year is Unrund by Korinna Lindinger. Unrund is a porcelain robot shaped like a ball that rolls around, seemingly at random.  Looks great for parlor tricks or scaring your cat.  Check out the video below of Unrund rolling around on ice.

Also featured this year is the LOGOS M&M Robot Orchestra with  48 robotic wind instruments

Opening night: 10/6 -9 pm
Show open : 10/7 – 10/9  10 am – 8 pm
M&M concert:10/8 8 pm – Logos Tetrahedron concert hall: Bomastraat 26-28, 9000 GENT
Artbots is Free and open to the public
Location: UFO Building Ghent University, Sint Pietersnieuwstraat 35, Gent 9000
Contact: info@timelab.org

Link

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Tags: ArtBots, Belgium, Ghent, timelab

A project called Ciudad Nazca / Nazca City, led by Rodrigo Derteano, used a robot to draw a city in the Peruvian desert.

Similar in design to the ancient geoglyphs like the Nasca Lines, the robot drew large lines in the sand to create a city that is a mashup of ten cities in Latin America .  It took the  robot five days to complete the drawing, using a triangular plow dragged behind it. Rodrigo talks about the project:

I live and grew up in Lima. About 60% of the city today lies within the desert, most of it grew without any serious urban planning. It’s a self-made metropolis, the second largest city built in the desert after Cairo. It grew from 1 million to 8 million people in less than 60 years. There’s a lot of problems derived from this development in terms of sustainability and living standards which exacerbate the huge inequality of our society…

By drawing a gigantic map of a city onto the desert, the project not only seeks to draw attention to this facts, but questions our very concept of city, specially in regards to its environment.

Click through for a video of the project.

Link via (@laurenbuekes)

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Tags: desert, Peru

Retromatix based in London has created some cool solar powered robots using BEAM principles. BEAM stands for Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, Mechanics and was invented by Mark Tilden.  BEAM robots use simple analog circuits in favor of more complicated circuits using a microprocessor.  See some of our first BEAM style robots on our build page.  Wikipedia on BEAM robotics states:

Other rules that are included (and to varying degrees applied):

1. Use the lowest number possible of electronic elements (“keep it simple”)
2. Recycle and reuse technoscrap
3. Use radiant energy (such as solar power)

Shown here is Wattson from Retromatix, a solar powered little guy holding a flower.  Wattson and others are available for sale.  Head on over to Retromatix.com for contact info.

Click through to see a bunch of Wattson’s do their thing in the sunlight.

Link
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Tags: BEAM, london

Congratulations to all the winners of the Robot Film Festival,  held in New York City over last weekend.

Shown here is audience favorite is Operation daVinci.

Here are two of the many films we liked.

Me and My Robots by Jay Kila & Ben Jacob Mack

Modern World by David Naylor

if you didn’t make it or missed a film, you can see most of the films at Robot Film Festival on Vimeo.

Tags: festival, film, NYC, robot

A trio of artists from Germany called Robotlab have created a robot that will write out the entire bible.   The artists hope to bring this project to the Cathedral of Trier, Germany’s oldest cathedral.

Using a piece of paper 63 inches wide and a mile long, this re-purposed KR16 industrial robot will write out the entire bible using only a liter of ink.

The robot is supposed to be finished writing the bible on April 13, 2012.

The robot was previously shown at the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Seville Spain in 2008.

Click through for a video of the bible writing robot.

Link via (La Patilla)

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Tags: bible, germany, Robotlab