Monday, March 29, 2021
artwork by humanoid robot sells at auction for nearly $700,000
Wanna talk about disruptive technology? Game changing applications? Where and how does Artificial Intelligence cross over to Artificial Creativity?
https://youtu.be/wwSGYmrUHHA
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Choreography for Dancing Robots
Meet the Choreographer Behind Those Dancing Robots
"With just a few days left in 2020, renowned robotics company Boston Dynamics released a music video that featured a variety of two-legged, four-legged and wheeled robots dancing to The Contours' "Do You Love Me." The piece swiftly went viral, and has since been viewed nearly 30 million times. The choreography is, in short, bonkers, and uncannily illustrates the dexterity, balance and coordination of Boston Dynamics' designs.
As is typical of corporate marketing, however, no individual makers were credited, leaving folks in the dance community to wonder, who choreographed that? I dug through discussions of the project on Reddit and Twitter, learned the choreographer is Monica Thomas, and reached out to her immediately to learn more.
Can you tell us a bit about your personal dance history?
Yes! I was trained in the Cecchetti method, and I remained committed to ballet through high school although I took modern, jazz and tap classes along the way. In college, I began choreographing on my own and with others. In my senior year two friends—Theresa Madaus and Tara King—and I decided to make a "joke" dance. This collaboration turned out to be really significant: After college, we formed Mad King Thomas, and have made dances, installations and films together for over 10 years.
Before you started working with Boston Dynamics, were you familiar with their work?
I have a strong memory of seeing BigDog being pushed over and refind its balance, and slipping on ice but staying upright. It has stuck with me for years. I became familiar with Boston Dynamics when I moved back East, and was involved in the Uptown Spot project.
Can you tell us a bit about your creative process with the robots and the technical team? How did you go from ideas to action?
Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, who directed the video, sent a generous initial brief that gave me a lot of autonomy to come up with ideas. Early in the process I consulted with my long-term collaborators to flesh out conceptual and musical ideas. I would then bring these back to Marc. We ended up choosing "Do You Love Me?," which we both found appealing.
I spent time watching the robots move to get a sense of joint flexibility, etc. I then made a dance on my body to act out each part. I hired dancers to learn this choreography, which allowed it to be put together in one sequence for filming. I gave a video of the whole dance to Boston Dynamics, as well as each robot's part (except Handle—I tried to choreograph Handle using a hoverboard and mostly made myself nauseous)..."
Read the full article at its source: https://www.dancemagazine.com/boston-dynamics-dancing-robots-2651193214.html
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
MISSION TO MARS: students build Mars rovers
"MISSION TO MARS: Henryville students build Mars rovers"
"HENRYVILLE — NASA’s latest mission to Mars is providing a unique experience for Henryville High School students to learn about what it takes to make a rover successful on the red planet, which educators say they hope can help inspire students toward future careers.
Students in teacher Donna Gatza’s Biology classes are spending seven weeks of their 18-week semester on a series of projects related to the Mars rover Perseverance, which launched July 30 and landed Feb. 21 in the Jezero Crater on Mars. The mission’s aim is to seek signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples, potentially to take back to Earth.
“NASA has provided all kinds of incredible activities for the kids to learn hands-on, to be exposed to different careers, to be experienced to different things,” Gatza said. “Until this happened, how many people knew there was a thing called Astrobiology? It’s important to get the kids excited about something and out of their books.”
The lesson plans and activities have included students building their own rovers. Working in teams, they selected the size and type of materials (made from dried pasta) based on their budget, then designed and built the rovers using an app on their Chromebooks.
“[They] had to pick a launch system, there was budget in this and everything has a cost,” the teacher said. “So they had to design their entire mission based on what they had a budget for. And then there were some funky things like they missed a launch date, the government cut their funding — the things that really happen.”
Read the full article at its source: https://www.newsandtribune.com/news/mission-to-mars-henryville-students-build-mars-rovers/article_b2905a4e-88df-11eb-ab26-5f74825e284f.html
Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Challenges with remote learning? The first is engagement!!! Student Robotics in the Age of COVID
From EdSurge
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-01-26-how-leveraging-curiosity-may-keep-students-engaged-from-afar
"How Leveraging Curiosity May Keep Students Engaged From Afar"
Faith Bongiorno began her teaching career as an “art-on-the-cart” educator. But that changed one day when her son told her he wanted to participate in FIRSTⓇ LEGOⓇ League, a robotics program created through an alliance between FIRSTⓇ (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and LEGOⓇ Education. Curiosity piqued, she presented the program to her principal, worked to secure funding and stepped up to coach the after-school program.
This newfound passion led Bongiorno to transition to teaching general technology in the classroom and, eventually, robotics. Now, she’s a full-time education implementation specialist for FIRST and still works closely with a number of robotics teams in her area, including some high school seniors who were on her original team nine years ago. And, just like other educators, she’s been working hard to keep kids in the program engaged and safe from afar.
Bongiorno spoke with us about her experience with FIRST, STEM education and navigating remote instruction—as both an educator and parent—during the COVID-19 pandemic.
EdSurge: What challenges are you seeing with remote learning?
Bongiorno: The
first is engagement. Being one educator that engages 30 kids online
effectively is a challenge. For the students, it’s a challenge to feel
comfortable and, as Brené Brown says, to be vulnerable and brave to step out into that arena...."
Read the rest of this article at its source: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-01-26-how-leveraging-curiosity-may-keep-students-engaged-from-afar
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