Luigi Pagliarini

The development of robot art

Going through a few examples of robot artists who are recognized worldwide, we try to analyze the deepest meaning of what is called “robot art” and the related art field definition. We also try to highlight its well-marked borders, such as kinetic sculptures, kinetic art, cyber art, and cyberpunk. A brief excursion into the importance of the context, the message, and its semiotics is also provided, case by case, together with a few hints on the history of this discipline in the light of an artistic perspective. Therefore, the aim of this article is to try to summarize the main characteristics that might classify robot art as a unique and innovative discipline, and to track down some of the principles by which a robotic artifact can or cannot be considered an art piece in terms of social, cultural, and strictly artistic interest.

Distributed Robotics Education

Distributed robotics takes many forms, for instance, multirobots, modular robots, and self-reconfigurable robots. The understanding and development of such advanced robotic systems demand extensive knowledge in engineering and computer science. In this paper, we describe the concept of a distributed educational system as a valuable tool for introducing students to interactive parallel and distributed processing programming as the foundation for distributed robotics and human-robot interaction development. This is done by providing an educational tool that enables problem representation to be changed, related to multirobot control and human-robot interaction control from virtual to physical representation. The proposed system is valuable for bringing a vast number of issues into education – such as parallel programming, distribution, communication protocols, master dependency, connectivity, topology, island modeling software behavioral models, adaptive interactivity, feedback, and user interaction. We show how the proposed system can be considered a tool for easy, fast, flexible hands-on exploration of these distributed robotic issues. Through examples, we show how to implement interactive parallel and distributed processing in robotics with different software models such as openloop, randomness-based, rule-based, user-interactionbased, AIand ALife-based, and morphology-based control.

The future of Robotics Technology

In the last decade the robotics industry has created millions of additional jobs led by consumer electronics and the electric vehicle industry, and by 2020, robotics will be a

Redefining robot based technologies for elderly people assistance: a survey

100 billion worth industry, as big as the tourism industry. For example, the rehabilitation robot market has grown 10 times between 2010 and 2016, thanks to advancements in rehab/therapy robots, active prostheses, exoskeletons, and wearable robotics. In short, the very next decade robotics will become vital components in a number of applications and robots paired with AI will be able to perform complex actions that are capable of learning from humans, driving the intelligent automation phenomenon. Therefore, in this paper we try to depict the direction and the fields of application of such important sector of future markets, and scientific research.

A modern artificial intelligence Playware art tool for psychological testing of group dynamics

We analyse the state of the art of hi-tech and robot based technologies in terms of Assistive Technology for all patients and, in particular, elderly people assistance and everyday activities aid. We focus on different aspects and characteristics of these tools, such as playfulness, invasiveness, learning-speed, efficiency, short and long-term effect, active vs. passive, etc. We do so by showing the most important existing examples, and by taking into account all the possible factors that might help researchers when thinking of developing appropriate technologies for elderly care, as well as, for their relative assistance personnel. Indeed, while in rehabilitation robotics, a major role is played by the human–machine interface (HMI) used to gather the patient’s intent from biological signals, and convert them into control signals for the robotic artefacts, surprisingly, decades of research have not yet declared what the optimal HMI is in this context [1]. Further, there is an urgent need to clarify how various technologies can be a goal or an approach for preventive, rehabilitative and assistive interaction. Therefore, we try to make a first step towards a redefinition of Robotics Assistive Technology.

Integrating modular mechatronic systems for immersive performances

We describe an artistic method used for the psychological analysis of group dynamics. The design of the artistic system, which mediates group dynamics, emerges from our studies of modular Playware and remixing Playware. Inspired from remixing modular Playware, where users remix samples in the form of physical and functional modules, we created an artistic instantiation of such a concept with the Parallel Relational Universes, allowing arts alumni to remix artistic expressions. Here, we report the data emerged from a first pre-test, run with gymnasiums alumni. We then report both the artistic and the psychological findings. We describe the modern artificial intelligence implementation of this instrument. Between an art piece and a psychological test, at a first cognitive analysis, it seems to be a promising research tool. In the discussion we speculate about potential industrial applications, as well.

Playware Explorations in Robot Art

As a branch of mechatronic research in interactivity, and in robot art, we describe the concept of implementing Playware based tools inspired by modern AI robotic systems for audio-video performances. We develop immersive and personalizable tools that can allow any user to manipulate both audio and video output in a very easy manner, thanks to mechatronical wearable interfaces. In this light, we describe two of our systems that explore the concept of run-time composition of a variety of input and output modalities, e.g. both music and graphical expression. Indeed, we developed both hardware/software tools by which it is possible to allow any user to create new song versions of music (e.g. the MusicTiles app) and software that are able to translate the musical experience in to a visual one (e.g. the MAG software). By interfacing these technologies into mechatronic systems, it is now possible to create a run-time audio-video performance that is original and unique. This can further be combined with modular wearable - inspired by modular robotics - to interact and control the performance. This mechatronic wearable concept and its implementations exemplify how to convey a user-centered experience in playware technology.

ALife for Real and Virtual Audio-Video Performances

We describe the upcoming art field termed robot art. Describing our group contribution to the world of robot art, a brief excursion on the importance of the underlying principles, of the context, of the message and its semiotic is also provided, case by case, together with few hints on the recent history of such a discipline, under the light of an artistic perspective. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to try to summarize the main characteristics that might classify robot art as a unique and innovative discipline, and to track down some of the principles by which a robotic artifact can be considered - or not - an art piece, in terms of social, cultural and strictly artistic interest.

An educational tool for interactive parallel and distributed processing

MAG (an Italian acronym which stands for Musical Genetic Algorithms) is an electronic art piece in which a multifaceted software attempts to “translate” musical expression into a corresponding static or animated graphical expressions. The mechanism at the base of such “translation” consists in a quite complex and articulated algorithm that, in short, is based on artificial learning. Indeed, MAG implements different learning techniques to allow artificial agents to learn about music flow by developing an adaptive behaviour. In our specific case, such a technique consists of a population of neural networks – one dimensional artificial agents that populate their two dimensional artificial world, and which are served by a simple input output control system – that can use both genetic and reinforcement learning algorithms to evolve appropriate behavioural answers to an impressively large shapes of inputs, through both a fitness formula based genetic pressure, and, eventually, a user-machine based feedbacks. More closely, in the first version of MAG algorithm the agents’ control system is a perceptron; the world of the agents is a two dimensional grid that changes its dimensions accordingly to the host-screen; the most important input artificial agents get (i.e. not necessarily the only one) is the musical wave that any given musical file produces, run-time; the output is the behavioural answer that agents produce by moving, and thereby drawing on to a computer screen, therefore graphical. The combination of artificial evolution and the flows of a repeated song or different musical tunes make it possible for the software to obtain a special relationship between sound waves and the aesthetics of consequent graphical results. Further, we started to explore the concept of run-time creation of both music and graphical expression. Recently, we developed a software by which it is possible to allow any user to create new song versions of popular music with the MusicTiles app simply by connecting musical building blocks. This creation of musical expression can happen as a performance (i.e. run-time). When connecting the MusicTiles app to the MAG software, we provide the connection and the possibility to melt both musical expression and graphical expression in parallel and at run-time, and therefore creating an audio-video performance that is always unique.

An educational tool for creating distributed physical games

In this article we try to describe how the modular interactive tiles system (MITS) can be a valuable tool for introducing students to interactive parallel and distributed processing programming. This is done by providing a handson educational tool that allows a change in the representation of abstract problems related to designing interactive parallel and distributed systems. Indeed, the MITS seems to bring a series of goals into education, such as parallel programming, distributedness, communication protocols, master dependency, software behavioral models, adaptive interactivity, feedback, connectivity, topology, island modeling, and user and multi-user interaction which can rarely be found in other tools. Finally, we introduce the system of modular interactive tiles as a tool for easy, fast, and flexible hands-on exploration of these issues, and through examples we show how to implement interactive parallel and distributed processing with different behavioral software models such as open loop, randomness-based, rule-based, user interaction-based, and AI- and ALife-based software.