A new science and art collaboration will explore people's responses to cuddling a robot. 'Embrace Angels' is unique live experience at Nottingham Contemporary that will explore how people and robots can interact.
The interactive performance-installation taking place next week is a collaboration between computer scientists at the University of Nottingham and award-winning artists Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat who are pioneers in AI, robotics, and human intimacy.
'Embrace Angels' will invite visitors to walk a red carpet to where two robotic arms are waiting. The artists explore a poetic and innovative AI system for the robot arms to respond in real time with new embracing gestures. Nottingham scientists will work with the artists to capture the data from the event to enable the robots to be trained to autonomously move and respond. The trained robots will then be part of the final performance piece later this year in Amsterdam.
This project is part of the programme Somabotics at the University of Nottingham that aims to creatively embody Artificial Intelligence.
Embrace Angels is a really unique way to undertake research in the wild, involving the public in the capture of data in real time that will be used to train the robots. People will embrace the robots that are under human control and we can stand back and gather data on what happens and what responses are and then that will be used to inform the AI so that in the next phase the robots will be completely autonomous.
The performance will feature a screen that will show how AI interprets the movements and words of onlookers creating a dream-like loop of human machine interaction.
Artists Lancel and Maat are considered pioneers exploring our sense of "togetherness" in our socio-technical world. Their internationally presented and award-winning art works provoke dialogue about the experience of intimacy when mediated by robots and AI. Lancel's art-science PhD at the TU Delft questions how our bodies feel when touching and being touched, when mediated though technology.
The performance aims to address some key questions around human/robot interaction - Can humans and robots truly embrace? Can an AI learn to embrace? Do we trust robots to embrace us? And do robots need consent? What dreams and memories of embracing would we be able to share with robots in the future?
Our collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham is a fascinating journey into the imagination of intimately embracing each other in a future human-machine synthesis. For the project 'Embrace Angels' we explore a tender ritual in which people and robots meet in a group embrace. The robot responds through an innovative AI that translates the audience's storytelling and memories of embracing, through categorization and hallucination. In this inclusive ritual we are all embracing Angels. Together we create new feelings of embracing through playing together with our sense of risk and trust, isolation and togetherness.
Robotics and AI are becoming part of our everyday lives and in certain scenarios touch may be necessary, for example if they become used to help deliver care or certain services. Through this type of creative exploration we can gently introduce people to this idea and explore things like trust and levels of comfort with robots that could help inform future applications of the technology.
Embrace Angels is at Nottingham Contemporary on 22 and 23 July and tickets need to be pre-booked an cost £3 each.
