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APARNA RAO: Since 2002, and too many of our ideas
involved animating physical objects
in ways that appeared lifelike and self-aware.
This notion of sentience was essential for us to realize.
Its key cognitive triggers are often
buried in the microns and milliseconds
of a physical gesture.
Unless we could define motion very precisely,
it was impossible to hit the exact nerve in the brain that
makes something look alive.
And industrial and robotics is not
concerned with how things move, how
the subtle nuances of movement can often
develop complex inner states.
So from quite early on, we collaborated with engineers
to tailor make entire motion systems in an iterative process
that dragged on for years.
What added to the challenge was our need
to conceal loud sounds, cables, any sign of technology,
and fit bulky mechatronics into the tight constraints
of our [? form ?] language.
We then learned that custom physical technology
is fragile, very expensive, constantly evolving,
and imprinted with each engineer's personal bias.
It became simply unmanageable.
Luckily, in 2017, we got the chance
to start building a more universal and robust
animatronics toolkit within the Swiss University ecosystem
while nested at the Wyss Zurich institute.
We call the project PATHOS with the specific aim of approaching
robotics as a performative language of movement
and response.
With the support of Google Arts and Culture,
we prototyped its key feature, a browser interface
that makes the free drawing of motion calls
and real-time feedback a reality.
For the first time in 18 years, we
can now directly see the nuance we are sketching instead
of having to anticipate it through a string of numbers
or lines of code written by an engineer.
For example, in this project, we wanted
to animate a canvas with a sort of slapstick feel.
Since its mechanical movement is a complex interplay
of four motors, it would have been impossible
for us to animate without a user friendly motion editor.
So we first recorded draft motion calls
through live action, and then edited them in high resolution
using the PATHOS toolkit, which also
allowed us to intuitively explore different walking
expressions.
Finally, we could integrate these movements
in a simple autonomous behavior and test in the high risk
environment of a public space.
We recently began to share our tools with others.
This is a response of beating heart animated
by a non-engineer from start to finish in just a few days.
It uses our first linear modules,
which continually enable several other ongoing experiments.
We can now imagine that PATHOS can
evolve into an open platform that
offers new possibilities in the field of visual aesthetics
and demonstrates that robotics can
become accessible to everybody.
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