Boredomresearch
Boredomresearch is a collaboration between british Artists Vicky Isley and Paul Smith.
they have a fascination in the mechanics of the natural world which they explore using contemporary technologie. their work transcends boundaries between art, science and society and ooen up channels for dialogue and engagement between public and scientific domains.
Chosen Works
Robots in Distress
What and When?
Boredomresearch is working with computational technologie since 1996. They produced ‘Robots in Distress’ in 2017 during the FEAT (Future Emerging Art and Technology) Residency Programme, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. It’s a simulation of autonomous underwater agents, developed in collaboration with SubCULTron and researchers at the Artificial Life Lab (Karl Franzens University, Graz Austria), who are creating the world’s largest underwater robot swarm to monitor the heavily human polluted Venice Lagoon.
Why?
In an interview Vicky Isley explains what they wanted to show the public.
After doing some research about motorcontrolled robots, they found out that some motors got strangled in plastics en stopped working. With the video they show the robots live and die in a plastic sea.
In an other interview they were asked what the question was they wanted to address in this collaboration. They answered: “Human culture is at a significant point where we can no longer hide the imbalancing and destabilising exploitation
of the environment that sustains human culture. This is addressed in our FEAT Robots in Distress project, considering how technological interventions exist at the limits of human comprehension. In many cases, action, leads to further problems and this is something we need to be mindful of.”
how?
They expressed data and mathematical models in a poetic way with lifesounds and reallife animations.
Boredomresearch explains their work as followed: “In this artwork boredomresearch present a
murky underwater world populated by glowing
craft navigating the hazards of plastic waste. The SciArt collaboration ponders the nexus of biology, robotics and environmental impact by confronting the emergence of synthetic emotions in challenging environmental circumstances; these craft are learning to recognise and express hopelessness. This expression of emotional robotics inquires
on the relationship between organism and its environment in a context of increased dependence on advanced technological solutions.”
Scientific background : Artificial intelligence in the ocean
“In computer science, artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to
the natural intelligence displayed by humans. The term “artificial intelligence” is often used to describe machines (or computers) that mimic “cognitive” functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as “learning” and “problem solving”.”
There a lot of stories about artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionizing industrial processes and space exploration. But AI is also helping scientists down below.
Which robots, which industries?
Most of the robots are inspired by the biology and design engineering of nature. The applications for underwater robots are big, however the most immediate and demanding needs are in the areas of oil and gas, mineral exploration, underwater data collection, search and rescue, monitoring sea life and underwater environmental changes, and military and defense.
Companies like Liquid Robotics, Bluefin Robotics, Atlas Maridan, Deep Ocean Engineering, and Teledyne are already pursuing these opportunities.
Liquid Robotics s more specialized on oceanic observation, making data collection and monitoring easier, safer, and more cost-effective by using wave energy and stored solar energy in their wave gliders.
Bluefin Robotics and Atlas Maridan are focused on various commercial, defense and scientific applications which the help of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs).
Deep Ocean Engineering and Teledyne are more focused on the development of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) for various underwater applications from ship hull inspection to underwater lost treasure hunting.
What are the challenges?
“Most underwater robots have now achieved a certain degree of flexibility in their motion with superior navigation, imaging, and sensing that enable them to perform much better than was previously possible, but still not good enough in terms of reliability, mingling with sea life and tackling unknown problems. There are huge challenges
in front of research labs and companies that are building underwater robots. Those challenges are as follows:
• Underwater Communications
Underwater communication systems involve the transmission of information in the form of sound, electromagnetic (EM), or free-space optical (FSO) waves. Sound waves in shallow water can be adversely affected by temperature gradients and surface ambient noise. Electromagnetic waves do not work well in an underwater environment due to the conducting nature of the medium, especially in the case of seawater. Free-space optical waves used as wireless communication carriers are generally limited to very short distances. Moreover, high power levels are needed for underwater communication due to more complex signal processing.
• Positioning Measurements
Marine navigation has always faced the challenge of obtaining precise positioning, and this is especially true
in underwater environments. In air (aerial, terrestrial or surface), the geo-referenced positioning is facilitated by the use of GPS information. Underwater, GPS fails to provide location and time information. There are a few solutions available to mitigate this problem such as commercially available GPS Intelligent Buoys, but much work remains to be done toward the development of more robust and cost- effective underwater positioning system capable of yielding
adequate performance.
• Mid-Depth Zone Navigation
There have been some improvements in the surface and near-bottom navigation by the underwater robots currently available, but still, mid-depth zone (the water depth zone that is far from the sea surface and far from the seafloor) navigation has not improved significantly. This severely limits the navigational and exploration capabilities of the robot. At this time, there are not sufficient commercially available sensors that can work at this mid-depth for precise and accurate measurements.
• Unpredictable Disturbances
Environmental disturbances due to weather changes, waves, wind, and ocean currents have a significant impact on underwater robot motion and stability. Such environmental disturbances play an important role in defining the degree of autonomous behavior and mission planning in underwater robots. The odds of encountering a totally new problem in the underwater environment
are extremely high. Efficient maneuvering and obstacle avoidance by the robot are big challenges for the robot under unpredictable scenarios.
The global underwater robot market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 7% over the next 5 years and, according to various reports, one of the main drivers for the underwater robotics market is the exploration of undersea minerals. The global mining industry has the deep pockets and motivations
to pursue deep undersea mining operations. The development of cost-effective underwater robots running on natural renewable energy has already started to gain pace. However, it will be a herculean task for underwater robots to meet expectations and discover the new worlds within our world until the major challenges are solved.”
Examples
underWater data collection subcultron.
subCULTron aims for achieving long-term autonomy in
a learning, self-regulating, self-sustaining underwater society/culture of robots in a high-impact application area: Venice, Italy.
Our heterogeneous system consists of 3 different agent types:
On the sea-ground, artificial mussels are the collective long-term memory of the system, allowing information to stay beyond the runtime of other agents, thus allowing to continue learning from previously learned states. These mussels monitor the natural habitat, including biological agents like algae, bacterial incrustation and fish.
On the water surface, artificial lily pads interface with the human society, delivering energy and information influx from ship traffic or satellite data.
Between those two layers, artificial fish move/monitor/ explore the environment and exchange info with the mussels and lily pads. Artificial mussels are novel class of underwater agents.
We aim to push forward the edge of knowledge with novel sensors (electric sense/electro-communication), novel bio-inspired algorithms (underwater hives) and novel energy harvesting in underwater scenarios.
Overall, we aim for an artificial society underneath the water-surface to the service of a human society above the water.
oil and gas industrie
mineral exploration
search and rescue
monitoring sea life and underWater environmental changes
military and defense
aPads:These agents at the surface will provide global cognition, user interaction and energy autonomy for the whole system.
aFish:These highly manouverableagents will provide action and information transfer.
aMussels:These very weakly actuated units will provide long-term spatial coverage.
Autonomous ships
Rolls-Royce
Blue revolution, underwater farming
Innovations like this have moved aquaculture further offshore, which helps mitigate problems of pollution and disease that can plague coastal fish farms.
InnovaSea
Undersea cloud computing, underwater datacenters
Microsoft
New waves of ocean energy
Carnegie Wave Energy
Medicines from the seas
PharmaSea
Ocean thermal energy
KRISO,www.kriso.re.kr
Deep sea mining
Nautilus Minerals
Biomimetic robots
Boston Engineering
Underwater augmented reality glasses
US Navy Photo by Richard Manley
SCUBA droids
Osada/Seguin/DRASSM
Coastal sensors
Smartfin
Methods
The video exists of graphics an computational animations. It’s made by a custom built software in Blender Game Engine. Variable dimensions can be exhibited as a projection or on a HD display with speakers and amplifier. The sound is also very important in this video since
they wanted to make a poetic image with emotions that speaks to the people.
This research is about finding other ways to make a poetic video with meaningful animations. I want to make a video with handdrawnings.
The most important question to ask is:
What feeling do I want to present?
‘Robots in distress’ express hopelessness.
Since this research is about IA’s, I wanted to do exact the opposite and focus on hope.
This are some words I connect with hope:
light (the robots will bring light)
colourful (robots wil shine a light on the colourful reef) strong ( by making a strong contrast)
Keywords
pollution
artificial intelligence artificial neural netWork simulation
emotions
distress
noun
1.
extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain.
“to his distress he saw that she was trembling”
synoniemen: anguish, suffering, pain, agony, ache, affliction, torment, torture, discomfort, heartache, heartbreak; Meer
2.
LAW
another term for distraint.
verb
verb: distress; 3rd person present: distresses; past tense: distressed; past participle: distressed; gerund or present participle: distressing
1.
cause (someone) anxiety, sorrow, or pain.
“I didn’t mean to distress you”
synoniemen: cause anguish to, cause suffering to, pain, upset, make miserable, make wretched; Meer
2.
give (furniture or clothing) simulated marks of age and wear. “the manner in which leather jackets are industrially distressed” synoniemen: age, season, condition, mellow, weather, simulate age in; damage, spoil, dent, scratch, chip, batter
“the fireplaces were distressed”
References and links
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190510080951.htm https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/news/study-explores-the-use-of-robots-and-artificial-intelligence-to-under- stand-the-deep-sea
http://boredomresearch.net/wp/portfolio/robots-in-distress/
http://www.subcultron.eu/project-description/
http://www.featart.eu/index.php?id=33
SIMULATED DESPONDENCY FOR ROBOTS IN DISTRESS, Vicky Isley1 and Paul Smith2 7 March 2017 https://www.interaliamag.org/interviews/vicky-isley-boredomresearch/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/12-cutting-edge-technologies-that-could-save-our-oceans/ https://www.tractica.com/automation-robotics/challenges-for-underwater-robots/ https://blog.ozobot.com/steam/robots-in-the-world-underwater-bots-advancing-marine-research/ https://news.microsoft.com/apac/features/artificial-intelligence-takes-on-ocean-trash-cleaning-up-the-worlds-bea- ches-with-the-help-of-data/