Encounters: From talking heads to Swarming Heads

Robots at home and work has been a key theme in science fiction since the genre began. It is only now that we see this come in to realization, albeit in very basic forms such as the robot vacuum cleaners and various entertainment robotic platforms. In this video we highlight a number of projects woven around the iRobot Create research robot platform and an embodied conversational agent called the Prosthetic Head — an installation work by Stelarc. We start the visual journey by taking a satirical look at some of the parallels between a commercial communication product and the Prosthetic Head. The journey then moves through telepresence robotics, gesture based robot human interaction. The robots featured in the video are driven by an attention and behavioral system. Finally, the video concludes with a preview of the “Swarming Heads” — an interactive installation.