Technocultural research into robotics.

  • BigDog Robot, Black Dog Myth

    BigDog Robot, Black Dog Myth

    All gangly limbs and uncanny irresistable force, Boston Dynamics’ BigDog is an image from science fiction thrown onto the YouTube screen. The DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) funded project has built a demo of a mechanical pack mule that can carry loads across environments where wheels fear to roll.

  • Beers in the bathroom

    Beers in the bathroom

    Hanging in the upstairs men’s toilet is a poster that lays out a ‘Periodic Table of Beers’. This delicious combination of scientific iconography, postgraduate irreverence and well-researched information really suits the style of the ACFR.

  • Optimising Mars Rovering

    Optimising Mars Rovering

    At the ACFR there are regular presentations from visitors, academics and students. The first I saw was from Swiss engineer Franziska Ullrich, who presented work she had done to design an optimal Mars Rover that could take on the hostile, rocky, alien environment of an exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum.

  • Setting out on the trail

    Setting out on the trail

    My first challenge in setting up my computer is to set a password that the system will accept. Apparently this is the state of the art in artificial intelligence: a system that assesses the highly secure passwords to be just beyond the threshold of human memory. This was almost as annoying as the squeaky chair,…