Entity | Observations


Entity qualities are the things that makes a machine tick for us as human beings. Its the food for imagination and the reason why some love their computer while others are scared of offending an old elevator. Its the old belief that a tree in nature may be a troll, and that spirits lives in oil lamps. Its one of human last hope of not being alone in the universe together with the rest of the animals.
Animism
"It is often extended to include the belief that supernatural beings (or souls) endowed with reason, intelligence and volition inhabit ordinary objects as well as animate beings, and govern their existence (pantheism or animatism). More simply, the belief is that "everything is alive", "everything is conscious" or "everything has a soul".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism
Items may have the entity as it main purpose, like toy robots etc, or some may have a few entity qualities as a design feature for added emotional appearance and meta values for strengthening its brand. One clear and seldom example is Apples sleep light in their laptops.

Observations
The following is a collection of observed entity qualities in objects made by man. Mostly in robots and toys, but also some other everyday objects.
Preserving life
In nature preserving life is the essential. Living beings may use two tactics for this (except fighting and escaping) and that is to a access more energy, or hibernate until more energy is to be found.
Many apparatuses that runs on rechargeable batteries or energy provided by photovoltaic also uses this tactic.
Gain more energy:
Case: Laptops, Cellular phones.
Category: Observations
Ranking: * * * *
When running low on battery power, it asks for help. The task is delegated to the user. Its the only way it may survive since it has no means of transportation of its own. Some laptops may use a sound to inform about low energy, the sound may have a distinct feeling as a "cry for help".
Case: BEAM robot
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
A photopopper has the ability to move in search for energy, and by doing so it gains more with the result of more activity leading to even more energy supplied.
Hibernate until energy is available.
Case: laptops.
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
If energy is not supplied, it goes into hibernation,the so called sleep mode using the last energy to preserve memory and time settings. Waiting for better times that hopefully will come. A second way is to gear down in a mode that preserves energy for a longer time postponing the hibernation. This is also done when no input is detected in a certain time-span.
Case: Symet BEAM robot
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
Another way to hibernate is pulsating the hibernation in a fast or slow cycle. Using the limited amount of energy delivered to maintain action. The Symet BEAM robot only moves when energy is applied via solar cells, Pulsating the energy usage according to the supply makes it continue moving i a fast or slow manner.
Case: Robosapien BEAM robot
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
When input is not present for a certain time, it goes into sleep mode, clearly demonstrating this with stretching its hands and playing the sound of snoring.
Case: Photovoltaic lamps
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
A garden lamp with rechargeable gains energy during the day, preserving it until the night comes for using it. When it runs low, it starts hibernating until the next day comes. Preserving the batteries ability to reload.
Sensing the environment
As in nature, the ability to sense different types of input is important for a true entity. The inputs is light, sound, touch, temperature, energy feed, networking, vibrations and time. Sensing alone is not enough to have entity qualities, the inputs has to be processed in a way that makes it react in a distinct way.
Macro-sensing
Case: Night activated lamp.
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
Since this lamps actuator output is the same medium as it senses, it needs to adjust its sensing by combining it with a sense of time. This prevents the lamp from falling into a lavine of repeated reactions. When the environment becomes dark, it waits for a short period until it decide to turn it self on. When its turned on the environment has been changed. The timing delay gives it the ability to self-adjust for the new environment status. Then again if the environment changes, it may recognize it as a change, making it turns it self off if the change is more light.
Micro-sensing
Case: Robosapien
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
The robosapien is equipped with three senses, hearing, touch and one way networking.*
Actuators
Actuators are widely defined as all outputs on machines. This is movement back and forth, spinning, vibrations, sound, light, heath /cold and presenting graphics, text etc. Not only machines have movement, also certain materials have this ability to react when environment changes. Examples are memory alloys and pigments that react to temperature, light etc Also a materials ability to wear age is valued as a entity quality and may be defined as a actuator in this setting. Actuators are key to recognize entity qualities. Whit-out it it would be hard to observe, leaving mainly projected entity and mimicking entity as qualities.
Case: Chinese Flower-tea
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
The ancient chinese flower-tea, is dried and dead tea leafs containing tea flowers curved into ball shape and dried. When soaked in hot-water its leaves becomes soft, mimicking a flower that opens for the sunlight, releasing the flowers contained.
It has similarities with a dessert plant that dries out when hibernating, adding water makes it "come alive" again with movement and color change in such a fast manner that it inspires humans since we are not used to se plants move in such a fasts manner. That plant is also an example of a plant with bigger entity qualities than ordinary plants tighter with meat eating plants like @@@@
Case: Nabaztag
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
Nabaztag has three actuators, RGB light, movement of ears, and rich sound. A combination of ear positions, movement and abstract light gives a rich repertoire of output in together with the sound.
Case: Animatronics, by Hussein Chalayan
Category: References
Ranking: *
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/06/hussein_chalayans_aw.html
Mood (Emphatic Psychologic)
Case: idoog
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
The idoog is a tiny japanese toy robot that expresses its mood via small tunes, sounds, ear and head position and RGB light output. Its input are sound, light (detects shadow of hand in front of face) and a number of pushbuttons that is mapped to a set of social input. The nose is teasing, neck is cosy, and tail is annoying. This inputs in combination with a sense of time and listening makes the robot go bored if it don't detect any inputs after a while. If there is no input for a long time, it will go into sleep mode to preserve battery power. The repertoire contains of a large number of small tunes. The random choosing of this tunes according to the chosen mood gives it a surprising entity character for quite along time until repeated patterns appear.
lonely, irritated, happy, and annoyed. Expressed in colors and pattern in combination with sounds.
Body-language / motorics (Emphatic Physiologic)?
By definition the inventors of BEAM robotics claims that constructing fetes on a so called "walker" is very easy for man. The reason is that we instantly can see if it works, if not we feel pity for the bug, and recognizes it as a handicap. This is explained by the humans brains ability to quickly interpret any physical motion for its meaning. Is it attacking us? Running away, Is it limp? Is it a easy pray? How does it do that?
" Its function are one of human brains most important tools for learning and practice. "A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal performs an action and when the animal observes the same action performed by another (especially conspecific) animal. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself performing the action. These neurons have been observed in primates, including humans, and in some birds." So when observing a animal, or in this case, a machine doing something lifelike, we imagine inside our brains how the movement is done. And interesting is that we also have a feeling for animals far from us in shape, and therefor also for some machines and tools. The car-driver with its car as a cyborg almost feels the "pain" when the gears are connected before the clutch is fully pressed. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_cells
All movement in nature is always a energy efficient way of moving. Human walking for instance is more about constantly falling forward than actually moving the feets forward, the feets job is to prevent us from falling on the ground, this is recognized as dynamic movement.
But to gain a entity quality is not necessary the same has having a smooth elegant and well functioning movement, the opposite may just as well trigger our emphatic, and therefor the entity is established.
Silent or vibrating gears?. It depends… A entity object with a goal to mimic life in movement benefits from being silent. But since not many actuators can do this yet, few examples are made. Memory alloys, plastics and magnetic /pneumatic systems may be used for this.
On the other hand the vibrations from a gear or motor is a very important feedback in term of haptics in cases like cars, tools and PCs. A vivid computer user may feel its computer having a hang-up long before any screen message eventually pops up.
Case: BEAM walker
Category: Observations
Ranking: *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM_robotics
Case: Dynamic walk
Category: Reference
Ranking: *
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050806/bob8.asp

Posted: Tor. - November 30, 2006 at 12:03 AM          

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