Robotinity – The New RoboLab in Linz, Austria

Credit: AEC

Robotinity the New RoboLab at the Ars Electronica Center Linz, Austria opens March 11, 2011 with a new exhibition called "What Machines Dream Of". The new RoboLab invites visitors to imagine themselves to be archeologists in the distant future and to ask: What would we discover on a dig through the remains of the 21st century, excavating the beginnings of the epoch in which human-machine coexistence was in its infancy? With examples culled from the realms of art, design and science, RoboLab sketches the trajectory of the rise of Robotinity. Highly recommended visit! 

Credit: Infonaut 2010

The new RoboLab gathers together artworks, scientific developments, and visions of the future grouped into four thematic clusters: Environment is populated by robots whose forms and movements take after those of animals with whom humankind has coexisted since time immemorial, and thus alludes to a connection between our newly-acquired technological capabilities and our age-old instincts and behavioral patterns; Medicine focuses on earthshaking developments in the field of medical technology, and illustrates how the organism and the machine are progressively growing together; the LifeStyle area spotlights robotic fashion trends; and RoboLandscape traces the history of robotic design—beginning with plain imitation of certain animals and plants, to the creation of mechanical men capable of walking erect, and culminating in completely new creatures not modeled on any natural precursors.
Ars Electronica Center Linz has been pursuing since 2009: juxtaposition and intermingling of art and science. This course has evoked great interest on the part of the general public, opened up completely new points of view as well as prospects for collaboration, and thus made possible an internationally unique interdisciplinary approach to issues of tremendous importance to the whole world right now and in the days to come.

Winning Robot Boat from Austria

Image: INNOC ASV Roboat

Austria's ASV Roboat remains the undisputed world champion in robotic sailing. The completely automatic sailing boat from the  Austrian INNOC research team was able to defend its title against eight competitors from the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Germany at this year's World Robotic Sailing Championship (WRSC) in Canada from the 7th to the 10th of June 2010. All in all, the participating boats had to prove their worth in six disciplines. By using artificial intelligence, robotic sailing boats can, in the long term, be set on any course – fully automated and without human involvement. INNOC – Austrian Society for Innovative Computer Sciences is an independent research center founded in 2005 and located in Vienna, Austria. INNOC focuses its scientific work at Cognitive Systems, Robotics, Electronics and Embedded Systems.

Research on marine mammals with robot boat

INNOC is developing an autonomous sailing boat to act as a maritime research platform for passive-acoustic monitoring (PAM) of marine mammals. The project is a joint research project with Oregon State University.  Possible applications of the Roboat technology are intelligent sensor buoys, safety on sailing boats, CO2-neutral in transportation of the goods, reconnaissance and surveillance, robot boat as sailing instructor, supply vessel. 
The € 0,44 Million three year project (2010-2013) is funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research, Funding Programme Sparkling Science. 

The World in 100 Years

"Everyone will have his own pocket telephone that will enable him to get in touch with anyone he wishes. People living in the Wireless Age will be able to go everywhere with their transceivers, which they will be able to affix wherever they like— to their hat, for instance …“
Robert Sloss: "The Wireless Century,” in: "The World in 100 Years,” Berlin, 1910

credit: Nicolas Ferrando, Lois Lammerhuber

The new exhibition at the Ars Electronica Center Linz, Austria pays tribute to the creativity, courage and inventiveness of those men and women who have totally committed their energies, abilities and knowledge to a vision of the future. This exhibition surveys a 200-year time span: looking back at what people about a century ago anticipated for this day and age, and showcasing what contemporary thinkers foresee 100 years from now.

Asimo at AEC

Honda’s humanoid robot ASIMO will makes its public debut in Austria at this year's Ars Electronica Festival. September 2-8 in Linz, festival visitors will have the opportunity to experience an impressive demonstration of ASIMO’s extraordinary capabilities at Deep Space in the Ars Electronica Center.

ASIMO will perform “Deep Symphony”, a project developed jointly by researchers and artists at the Ars Electronica Futurelab and Honda’s R&D people. This application enables visitors of the Deep Space, to interactively explore an audiovisual environment together with ASIMO.

Interactive Music Robot

This piece is a joint performance created by Infonaut and Quartet.cc. Quartet is an Internet Interactive Kenetic Musical robotinstrument.

The interactive music robot was developed by art roboticists Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska and consists of three robotic musical instruments and an installation visitor. The division of labor is simple: the user inputs a musical motif, software composes a work, and the robot orchestra delivers the performance (though one that turns out to be a highly complex affair). The five-centimeter-wide bars of a marimba are bombarded with balls fired from several meters away, robot fingers dexterously draw melodies out of a wine-glass organ, and an unconventional percussion section provides the rhythm.

The musicrobot Quartet is hosted by the Ars Electronics Center (AEC) in Linz Austria, where visitors can create their own song live, which will automatically posted to YouTube. The music robot can even be accessed via Internet.

Robotic Healthcare Design

At the Austrian University of Applied Arts in Vienna students are developing new design concepts for human tools. The CARRIER designed by three students is an advanced wheelchair for handicapped and temporary disabled people. It has multiple features, that make it more usable than a regular wheelchair and gives the user a chance to spend the day as usually as without a wheelchair. See project page.