robotic ecologies lab
Prototypes from the Robotic Ecologies Lab at UVa (2007-08) with Troy Rogers and Matthew Burtner (’08) visit the blog: [LINK TO THE BLOG]
Metropolis Magazine: “Shape Shifters” [link]
ZDNet + Slashdot: [link]
Hook: “Intelligent Design: Will Robots Take Over Architecture?” [link]
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Ideas: This is not just about architectural machines that move. It is about groups of architectural machines that move with intelligence. We have named these new organizations “Robotic Ecologies”: promiscuous new environments brought forth by the rapid release of advanced computation into the physical realm. The ideas presented in this portfolio are an attempt to understand, to work with and against, these new technological (and some say spiritual) paradigms. The work and essays were produced by a small collaborative of architects, urbanists, amateur roboticists, and artists. The projects are as much about exposing the ills of our twenty-first century technological imperative as they are about celebrating their latent potential. We are clearly both terrified and thrilled by the rich and diverse territories emerging in the arts and sciences. The crossing of architecture and robotics represents one of the most promising and perhaps exigent technological intersections in recent times. Robots are sensing, thinking and moving entities. They are different from most machines in that they are capable of intelligent behavior – the capacity to learn, adapt and act on their senses and intuitions. Groups of robots, or robotic ecologies, are unique in their capacity to work as an organized system: rather than merely acting on their individual desires, robotic ecologies can work collectively in swarms or packs. Without much fanfare, an extraordinary new phylum of intelligent machines is coming to life in laboratories, studios and machine shops across the planet. Designers are building and programming kinematic self-replicating machines, modular self-assembling robots, fields of sun-tracking robotic sunflowers, and the like. As Marshall McLuhan famously said, “First we build the tools, and then they build us.” The projects presented in this portfolio are about experimenting, exposing and exalting these new tools, processes and technologies. It is about exploring what happens when endless arrays of intelligent machines come together to form and define the world around us.