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Rise of the Laugh Machines
New York City, July 18: Artists from Amsterdam have devised a tickling robot which results in moans of delight rather than belly-laughs from people who try it. The gently caressing `Tickle Salon` is on display at a robotic art exhibit in New York City.
New York City, July 18: Artists from Amsterdam have devised a tickling robot which results in moans of delight rather than belly-laughs from people who try it. The gently caressing "Tickle Salon" is on display at a robotic art exhibit in New York City.
In the heart of the New York's art district in Chelsea there are low murmurs of pleasure and surprised smiles coming from women who are trying out a new exhibit from a couple of Amsterdam artists.
Maria Verstappen and her partner Erwin Driessens have invented a tickle robot which is on display at an art exhibit called "Robot".
Entitled the "Tickle Salon", the Dutch exhibit consists of a white bed, gentle electronic music and what can only be described as a tickle tassle, suspended by near invisible wires and controlled by a touch sensor.
The white, silky spider-like device, which could be mistaken for a tiny mop, drifts across the bare body lying beneath it on the bed. Stripped down to her bra, exhibit visitor Kari Martin exclaimed as the tassle passed over her bare back "It feels wonderful, it's great." Verstappen explained "The tassle is doing the tickling, but it is more in fact stroking" adding that "the robot and the whole installation is built to create an environment to be caressed by a robot." As the tassle covers the body it hones in on each individual's irregularities, building up an electronically sensored 3-D map of the surface. As time goes by and the computer learns the contours the touch becomes more gentle as it swishes over the body.
Michaele Goodman, also stripped to her bra, decided to try out the robot on her front rather than back. She smiled as the tassle passed over her neck, breasts and stomach saying, "This is just like a soft caress more than what you think of as being tickle, so it's really, it's really nice."
The tickle robot by Verstappen and Driessens is one of a kind and was designed purely as part of a travelling art exhibit - but they've received many compliments on the soft touch of their robot they're thinking about making more to sell to individuals.
Verstappen says the robot works by touch only, with no vision technology involved. She said, "What we built here is in fact a big touch sensor and it's like, this is like the finger tip, and the wires which you can hardly see because they are almost invisible, these are kind of a nerve system that gives the information to the hardware."
The Tickle Salon is part of a wider robotics show aiming to show that robots can be used in an artistic sense as well as being examples of the latest in cutting-edge technology. While the "Tickle Salon" asks its observers to strip bare, a pair of Brooklyn sculptors have themselves stripped the human body bare to create a full-size skeleton robot "Skelly", so-called after the title of the exhibit "Skeletal Reflections".
"Skelly" observes an audience participant's pose and strikes its own pose choosing among classic Renaissance human study poses programmed by the artists, such as Michelangelo's "David." Highly complex robotic parts mimic the way in which muscles and bone move on human bodies.
With the movie Terminator 3 blasting its way into cinemas right now the "Robot" exhibit highlights the more sensitive side of machines with a host of artists adaptations. It's being put on by the Eyebeam Gallery whose Director of Research and Development, Jonah Peretti says, "Our goal is to show all the different types of robots that are possible and that robots aren't just in Terminator, or C3PO or R2D2, there are artists using robots, there are activists using robots, you know a whole range of creative uses for robotics."
There are "activist" robotic toy dogs, whose noses were adapted with data collection sensors in order to sniff out contaminants among the host of walking, talking beeping and flashing robotic creations.
But the highlight of the show is most definitely the tiny little tickle tassle at the "Tickle Salon" where visitors lined up to succumb to its sensuous touch.
Bureau Report
Maria Verstappen and her partner Erwin Driessens have invented a tickle robot which is on display at an art exhibit called "Robot".
Entitled the "Tickle Salon", the Dutch exhibit consists of a white bed, gentle electronic music and what can only be described as a tickle tassle, suspended by near invisible wires and controlled by a touch sensor.
The white, silky spider-like device, which could be mistaken for a tiny mop, drifts across the bare body lying beneath it on the bed. Stripped down to her bra, exhibit visitor Kari Martin exclaimed as the tassle passed over her bare back "It feels wonderful, it's great." Verstappen explained "The tassle is doing the tickling, but it is more in fact stroking" adding that "the robot and the whole installation is built to create an environment to be caressed by a robot." As the tassle covers the body it hones in on each individual's irregularities, building up an electronically sensored 3-D map of the surface. As time goes by and the computer learns the contours the touch becomes more gentle as it swishes over the body.
Michaele Goodman, also stripped to her bra, decided to try out the robot on her front rather than back. She smiled as the tassle passed over her neck, breasts and stomach saying, "This is just like a soft caress more than what you think of as being tickle, so it's really, it's really nice."
The tickle robot by Verstappen and Driessens is one of a kind and was designed purely as part of a travelling art exhibit - but they've received many compliments on the soft touch of their robot they're thinking about making more to sell to individuals.
Verstappen says the robot works by touch only, with no vision technology involved. She said, "What we built here is in fact a big touch sensor and it's like, this is like the finger tip, and the wires which you can hardly see because they are almost invisible, these are kind of a nerve system that gives the information to the hardware."
The Tickle Salon is part of a wider robotics show aiming to show that robots can be used in an artistic sense as well as being examples of the latest in cutting-edge technology. While the "Tickle Salon" asks its observers to strip bare, a pair of Brooklyn sculptors have themselves stripped the human body bare to create a full-size skeleton robot "Skelly", so-called after the title of the exhibit "Skeletal Reflections".
"Skelly" observes an audience participant's pose and strikes its own pose choosing among classic Renaissance human study poses programmed by the artists, such as Michelangelo's "David." Highly complex robotic parts mimic the way in which muscles and bone move on human bodies.
With the movie Terminator 3 blasting its way into cinemas right now the "Robot" exhibit highlights the more sensitive side of machines with a host of artists adaptations. It's being put on by the Eyebeam Gallery whose Director of Research and Development, Jonah Peretti says, "Our goal is to show all the different types of robots that are possible and that robots aren't just in Terminator, or C3PO or R2D2, there are artists using robots, there are activists using robots, you know a whole range of creative uses for robotics."
There are "activist" robotic toy dogs, whose noses were adapted with data collection sensors in order to sniff out contaminants among the host of walking, talking beeping and flashing robotic creations.
But the highlight of the show is most definitely the tiny little tickle tassle at the "Tickle Salon" where visitors lined up to succumb to its sensuous touch.
Bureau Report