Community-powered interactive robotics art project
Both the Robotics Department and its home base, the Ford Robotics Building, are relatively new–especially compared to neighboring departments that count anniversaries in centuries.
This gives department a dynamic culture, unfettered by tradition and able to adapt to the needs of its community and society. But, it also raises the question of how the individuals who make up the department see themselves, and the department as a whole.
To foster self-reflection and put it on display, a group of Robotics staff led the creation of an interactive community art project. The group believed that while roboticists typically take on critical and impactful problems in transportation, medicine, mobility, logistics, and manufacturing, there are many opportunities to find play and amusement.
The final piece is a grid of art boxes, produced by different members of our robotics community, which offer an eight-inch square view into their own work with robotics.
The art boxes are equipped with an Arduino and servos, allowing the creators to add some motion into their dioramas.
At installation, the art included:
- a thimble-sized set of robotic legs running in front of the Robotics Building facade created by M-STARX, the student exoskeleton team
- a pair of robotic fish that swim among seaweed created by ROBARIUM, a group of students dedicated to raising awareness of ocean pollution
- the human mind represented as cogs and a dramatically LED-lit background, by the robot studio lab led by Patrícia Alves-Oliveira
- a dedication to the work of research administrators, who help acquire and organize funding for groundbreaking robotics research
- a computerized-light board in homage to Star Trek, by Peter Gaskell
- a lighted and intricate hand-drawn design, by Jason Corso
- an animated dance party around scaled-down MBots, the robots used across robotics courses, by Abhishek Narula
There are still several art boxes being completed by the community, and several more bays for additional boxes are available. The team hopes that the artwork continues to evolve with the community: the art boxes can be taken down, redesigned, and replaced over time as new community joins and others depart.
The project was led by Alyssa Emigh, Abhishek Narula, Dan Newman, and David Parkin, with support from the U-M Staff Career Development Fund.