robot fictions: entertainment cultures and engineering research entanglements

WWW.LIFTLAB.COM

NICOLAS NOVA, 15.06.2011, HATFIELD

LIREC

ROBOT FICTIONS: ENTERTAINMENT CULTURES AND ENGINEERING RESEARCH ENTANGLEMENTS

WWW.LIFTLAB.COM

I ROBOTA: A FICTION FROM THE OUTSET

Rossum’s Universal Robots (Karel Kapek, 1920)

242

I 243

THE EVOLUTION OF SCI-FI THEMES (STEPHANIE FOX)

I ROBOT ARCHETYPES 244

“Robots are popular culture. There

isn’t any “knock-off” possible

there; it’s been knock-off from the

get-go. It’s like worrying about

somebody “knocking-off” cowboy

movies.”

Bruce Sterling

ROBOT FICTION INFLUENCE(D) THEIR DESIGN 245I

I CULTURAL ELEMENTS CIRCULATION (ZIMMERMANN, 2010) 246

I ASSUMPTIONS EMBEDDED INTO OBJECTS (AKRICH, 1992) 247

these assumptions influence

robot design (consciously or not)

II ROBOT IDIOMS 248

robot, droid, android, bot, bioroid,

cyborg...

Asimo (Asimov), irobot (Asimov’

book), GOLEM (jewish fictional

character), Hadaly (Villiers de l’Isle

d’Dam’s fictional android), ELIZA

(after Bernard Shaw’s theatre play)

-> influence on what robots do/are

II RECURRING TROPE 1: THE SHAPE(S) OF ROBOTS 249

robot-objects

bio-mimetic robots

pool-cleaner

automatic car

android

robotic arm

lawn-mower

zoomorphic robot

4-legged (dog)

2-legged (duck)

No legs (snake, fish)

vacuum-cleaner

“the android is a solution

waiting for a problem”

Mark Meadows

2410

RECURRING TROPE 1: THE SHAPE(S) OF ROBOTSII

2411II RECURRING TROPE 1: THE SHAPE(S) OF ROBOTS

Study conducted at Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne (2008)

about people’s feeling towards robots

II WHAT THE ROBOT IDEA TAUGHT US... 2412

robots in scifi introduced the

idea that objects can have

“personality”, a behavior

II SHOULD ROBOTS BE MIMETIC? 2413

“it becomes real by behaving

real, by demonstrating the

behavior of things that are real”

Kevin Slavin

II RECURRING TROPE 2: ROBOT BEHAVIOR (ASIMOV) 2414

II 2415

RECURRING TROPE 2: ROBOT BEHAVIOR

II 2416

RECURRING TROPE 2: ROBOT BEHAVIOR

II IS LAW 2 APPLICABLE? (KAPLAN, 2001) 2417

how to define a “human”?

how to define “harm”?

II RECURRING TROPE 4: AUTOMATION 2418

ambivalence: control

versus automation

III BUT SCI-FI IS NOT JUST A GADGET CATALOGUE... 2419

“Implications not just applications” Antony Dunne

"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the

automobile but the traffic jam" Frederik Pohl

III ... SCI-FI AND PROBLEMS... 2420

“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.(...)

payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted

a mandatory fee. Not a tip.

(...)

From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless

steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew

the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll

sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.Joe Chip

said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can

live through it.”

Philip K. Dick: Ubik

III TODAY’S PROBLEM 2421

‘The fact that the robot couldn't

tell if it was a good time to

interrupt was a big problem for the

nursing staff: "I called it nasty

names and told it, 'Would you shut

the hell up? Can't you see I'm on

the phone? If you say "TUG has

arrived" one more time I'm going to

kick you in your camera.' "Some

staff members actually did lash

out and kick TUG in frustration’

New Scientist, 2010: http://cli.gs/

T7VH6e

IV CO-CONSTRUCTION

“Human Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies” by Schmitz,

Endres & Butzi (2008)

2422

films cite existing technology

technology inspire films

films inspire new technology

filmmakers and technologistsdeveloped shared new visions

NICOLAS NOVA

nicolas@liftlab.com

www.liftlab.com

THANK YOU MERCI GRACIAS DANKE GRAZIE

Slide 5: Dreaming of Robots: An

Interview with Bruce Sterling, acm

interactions, march-april 2005.

Slide 6: Zimmermann, B. (2010).

Redesigning Culture: Chinese Characters

in Alphabet-Encoded Networks”, Design

and Culture, 2-1, 27-43.

Slide 7: Akrich, M. (1992), "The

description of technical objects", in

Bijker, W.E., Law, J. (Eds),Shaping

Technology/Building Society, MIT Press.

Slide 10: Meadows, M. (2010). We,

Robot. The Lyons Press

Slide 11: Ray, C., Mondada, F. &

Siegwart, R. (2008). What do people

expect from robots? IEEE International

Conference on Intelligent Robots and

Systems, pp. 3816-3821.

Article references

REFERENCES 2424

Slide 13: Slavin, K. (2011). Reality Is

Plenty, Thanks. MoMo Amsterdam,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=o03wWtWASW4

Slide 15: Weld, D. & Etzioni, O. (1994).

The first law of robotics (a call to arms),

Proceeding AAAI'94 Proceedings of the

twelfth national conference on Artificial

intelligence (vol. 2).

Slide 16: Murphy, R.R. and Woods, D.

(2009). Beyond Asimov: The Three Laws

of Responsible Robotics IEEE Intelligent

Systems, pp. 14–20

Slide 17: Kaplan, F. (2001). Un robot

peut-il être notre ami ?. In Orlarey, Y.,

editor, L'Art, la pensée, les émotions,

pages 99-106.

Slide 22: Schmitz, M., Endres, C. & Butz,

A. (2008). A survey of human-computer

interaction design in science fiction

movies, Proceeding of INTETAIN '08

Proceedings of the 2nd international

conference on INtelligent TEchnologies

for interactive enterTAINment