The Am I Robot? installation comprises two elements:

• Combover Jo, the robot.

• A control room

 

The robot is fitted with distance sensors and basic navigation software as well as a speech synthesizer. It also has an on-board microphone and camera and four radio modules for wireless transmission (video, audio, text, navigation).

 

The control room contains a desk with a joystick, microphone, keyboard, speaker, and 2 monitors. One of the monitors shows a feed from the robot’s camera while the speaker plays the sound from the robot’s microphone. The other monitor displays a text entry box where text – either spoken in the control room microphone or typed in the keyboard – is displayed.

When no action is registered on the joystick for one minute, the robot enters autonomous mode. It avoids obstacles and pronounces sentences selected randomly from an SD card. As soon as someone activates the joystick in the control room, the robot enters manual mode. Its movements and speech are controlled by the user. The user text is sent as a text file to the robot that pronounces it with its speech synthesizer.

 

Photo Tom Curran

The control room is located close enough to the robot for the various antennas to stay within reach. The most successful set-up to date was when the robot and the control room were on different floors, insuring that the visitors interacting with the robot could not hear those in the control room. There is no signage indicating what the control room is for, it is left to the visitors to discover and experiment.