Our world is mountainous with difficult terrain to traverse. The ‘Segmented Mountain Climber’ is able to deftly maneuver up and down the steep mountainsides, and over their sharp peaks. Its Whegs, half wheel half legs, are able to climb over both small rocks and large boulders. It can also quickly reverse, turn and is able to continue movement even if flipped upside down. 

The Geared Vehicle is for a time in the future when quicksand covers 90% of the earth. This vehicle is able to elegantly traverse even the most dangerous quicksand pits using its innovative geared wheeled system. The vehicle is able to both go straight and backwards. And by bilaterally disengaging the gears, the vehicle is able to turn left and right. After the Great Sandstorm, human survival will depend on vehicles like this to allow us to continue to traverse great swaths of what is now a giant desert. 

EmotaBot is robot that evokes empathy in users by reacting to neglect in a way that imitates conciousness.

In the developing world of AI (Artificial Intelligence) the concept of conciousness is a prominant topic of discussion. The question everyone is asking is "can machines have conciousness?." Unfortunately, the answer isn't so simple; conciousness is defined by many different abilities and cannot just be measured as a binary answer. For our project, we were tasked with reproducing some of these defining abilities in order to give our robot the appearance of conciousness; specifically its ability to react to abuse. When placed in a confined space, the robot will become increasingly uncomfortable, until it becomes completely panicked. Throughout the process, it expresses its grief with a series of movements and changes in expression. This scenerio is inspired by pet neglect. Pets are often left in their carts/cages by their owners when they become too burensome. We wanted to recreate this situation because we were interested in the passivity of this kind of abuse.

Our project is a spherical bot with an ultrasonic sensor to evaluate its surroundings. It rotates 360 degrees on a stepper and the face moves up and down on a servo. In addition, the face has two micro servos above the eyes for eyebrows, giving it the ability to emulate facial expressions. Our robot is entirely 3D printed with lasercut acrylic circles placed over the outer shell of the bot in order to let an RGB LED shine through. The light will be yet another indicator of the robot's mood.

Studio Description

 وصف الأستوديو

Our world is changing and climate change is affecting the environment and global flora and fauna. People all over the world are working to alter this change through cultural shifts, technology, and new ways of thinking about energy and environmental remediation. Renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal, hold the potential to provide power without the need for a central energy source or refueling to aid in these environmental crises. Advancements in solid-state electronics, material science, and nanotechnology promise advancement in the fields of automation and robotics that will redefine how humans interact with the world around them.

إن عالمنا يتغير. يؤثر تلوث البر والبحر والتصحر و تغير المناخ في البيئة والنباتات والحيوانات في العالم بطريقة حقيقية وواقعية جدًّا. يعمل الناس في جميع أنحاء العالم لتعديل هذا التغيير من خلال التحولات الثقافية، والتكنولوجيا، وطرق التفكير الجديدة حول الطاقة والإصلاح البيئي. وتنطوي مصادر الطاقة المتجددة، مثل الرياح والطاقة الشمسية والطاقة الحرارية الأرضية و طاقة المد والجزر، على إمكانية توفير الطاقة دون الحاجة إلى مصدر طاقة مركزي أو إعادة التزود بالوقود للمساعدة في هذه الأزمات البيئية. تبشِّر التحسينات في إلكترونيات الحالة الجامدة وعلوم المواد وتكنولوجيا النانو بإحداث تحسينات في مجالات الأتمتة والروبوتات ستعيد تعريف كيفية تفاعل البشر مع العالم من حولهم.

This studio will call into question our fundamental understanding of what robots are, and how they interact with the environment, to develop a vision for new Bots that can create understanding about, remediate, interact with, and find equilibrium in our environment.

يثير هذا الأستديو تساؤلات حول فهمنا الأساسي لماهية الروبوتات وكيفية تفاعلها مع البيئة، لوضع رؤية لروبوتات جديدة يمكن أن تصنع فهمًا بشأنها وإصلاحًا و تفاعلًا معها، فضلًا عن إحداثها للتوازن في بيئتنا.

Students will learn the fundamentals of energy, mechanics, and electronics. They will explore emerging renewable technologies, and research far-flung environments and pressing ecological issues to inform the design of their Bots. These Bots will serve to not only remediate and protect the environment but also to symbolize performance beyond our current conceptions and capabilities regarding improving our planet and well-being.

سيتعلم الطلاب الأساسيات في مجال الطاقة و الميكانيكا والإلكترونيات، وسيستكشفون التقنيات المتجددة الناشئة، كما سيبحثون عن البيئات البعيدة والقضايا البيئية الماسة لتوجيه عملية تصميم روبوتات ReNuBots. لا يقتصر عمل هذه الروبوتات فقط على الإصلاح والحماية، ولكن أيضًا على تصور الأداء الذي يفوق مفاهيمنا و قدراتنا الحالية، كما أنها تستخدم أيضًا خيالنا عند قيامها بمهامها في تحسين كوكبنا ورفاهنا.

Skills & Technologies 

Description

We will create montages using photo editing software (or physically by cutting and pasting) of a future world. Imagining either a utopia or dystopia and describe how we arrived at this future. 

Instructions  

Use Photoshop to generate a Fictional Future World. 

Start with a blank canvas with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 or greater. 

Place each element on a separate Photoshop layer

Use high resolutions (large pixel count) images to build your montage

Consider perspective, color, brightness, and scale

Try multiple different options to determine which best tells your narrative

Deliverables

Create a post to showcase your image montage of a future fictional world. 

Write a description to explain the world and how it became that way.