GHOSTLAB AUTOMATION FULL

All robotics labs are haunted in this sense. Like all stories, they are mirrors sites for reflection. These are stories of hope of redemption and fear of annihilation. These are stories of abjection, alienation, enslavement, and labor under capitalism. It is haunted by histories of violence, by present contests, and by fantasies and nightmares of the future. It is haunted by countless stories, spoken and unspoken, written and erased, dimly remembered and purposely forgotten.

Concept Statement This is a fraught space. The space is highly flexible and reconfigurable to enable a broad variety of experimental scenarios. The work features interactive sound and lighting that supports diverse experimental purposes. It is a space for conducting research and also for reflection and meditation on the research itself. GHOST Lab is also an art installation and performance space where the performers are robots, AI, and humans. Production: Kyle Blomquist, Zachary BursiĪ collaboration between Ars Robotica and the Center for Human, Artificial Intelligence, and Robot Teaming (CHART), GHOST Lab is a laboratory for experiments with diverse groups of robots, artificial intelligence (AI), a networked unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) lab, and human teaming. Lead scientists: Spring Berman, Lixiao HuangĮngineering team: Mustafa Demir, Shenbagaraj Kannapiran Robotopolis was supported by a grant from ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. It is a meditation on those things that get erased and made invisible, things that get forgotten or ignored, things that are left out of our fables of yesterday and dreams of tomorrow. The work engages the ways in which the emergence of automation, global capitalism, and white supremacy intersected in history, structure our present realities, and shape our visions off the future. Robotopolis is simultaneously a site for conducting science, and also for contemplating its human impacts and costs.

GHOSTLAB AUTOMATION FULL

Projectors cast these shadows over the environment in an extended animation that represents a full day in the life of the two cities. The invisible city only makes its presence know by the shadows it casts. Robotopolis features two cities occupying the same location: one you can see, and another you can’t. It is also an art installation, a performance space where the performers are robots and humans. A collaboration with the Center for Human, Artificial Intelligence, and Robot Teaming (CHART), Robotopolis is a testbed for interacting teams of autonomous and remotely piloted vehicles. It is a laboratory designed to investigate the risks that arise when driverless cars and human-operated vehicles share the roads, to test systems that mitigate those risks, and to do so in a safe, controlled environment.

Ghostlab automation