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Robotic Ecologies

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon May 28, 2007 06:01 PM
from the rise-of-the-machines dept.
Robotics Technology
Roland Piquepaille writes "The University of Virginia (UVA) School of Architecture has started a new program about 'robotic ecologies' which wants to answer the question: Will robots take over architecture? As said the program leader, 'This research is not just about architectural machines that move. It is about groups of architectural machines that move with intelligence.' Apparently, buildings tracking our movements and adapting their shape or texture according human presence are not far fetched. Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."
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  • Flaws (Score:5, Interesting)

    by biocute (936687) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:03PM (#19303153) Homepage
    What if you could talk to a building and it could talk back?
    Then what about the wife we already have?

    What if a building could adapt its shape, texture, light, sounds, and heat to your presence?
    Only if it can also read our moods. How would it know if I am in the mood to read a book (good light source) or to watch TV (dimmer)?

    And most importantly the question every slashdotter wants to know -- What if we want to have sex on the kitchen bench, instead of cooking? Would the building turn down the lights and maybe warm the bench a little?

    I'm not expecting a machine to figure things out themselves, but its ability to learn on circumstances is important to serve us appropriately.

    I guess it's human's unpredictability that makes robots imperfect.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Eddi3 (1046882)
      "Only if it can also read our moods. How would it know if I am in the mood to read a book (good light source) or to watch TV (dimmer)?"

      We already have basic mind reading devices, what makes you think these technologies won't advance? After all, brain waves are really just electric impulses, and once we figure out how to decode them, electric impulses could (very likely) be read with extreme accuracy.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Ltar (1010889)
        ""Only if it can also read our moods. How would it know if I am in the mood to read a book (good light source) or to watch TV (dimmer)?""

        How about this- if we turn on the TV, the lights dim. if we are holding a book (probably with an imbedded RFID tag) and stop moving for a bit, it'll focus a light on us.

        Why does it need to read our minds, when our actions are so much more easily observable?

    • And most importantly the question every slashdotter wants to know -- What if we want to have sex on the kitchen bench, instead of cooking? Would the building turn down the lights and maybe warm the bench a little?

      I don't know if it'll accommodate by warming the bench, but, if it answers, I wonder if it'll say 'get a room'?

    • Re:Flaws (Score:5, Funny)

      by IgLou (732042) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:18PM (#19303271)
      You're fine so long as you're not having sex on the counter. In which case the most likely thing would be a floating point error that causes speakers to blare out "Warning! Warning! Unauthorized biological organisms on the cooking surface! Sterilize! Sterilize!" That's when you regret your gas stove that it quickly adapts into a flame thrower.

      This post has just saved a life... I know it.

    • the unblinking eye (Score:4, Funny)

      by Scrameustache (459504) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:30PM (#19303365) Homepage Journal

      What if a building could adapt its shape, texture, light, sounds, and heat to your presence?
      Only if it can also read our moods. How would it know if I am in the mood to read a book (good light source) or to watch TV (dimmer)?
      Good choice, Dave, the on-line reviews are very positive.
      When you're done, would you like to play a game of chess?
  • "Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."

    The question isn't if, it's when.
    • "Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."

      Basement! I need a status report! Set sunlight shields to block! And where the heck is the virgin I ordered in the holo deck?
    • My question would be when I'm in a bad mood and lip it off will it give me attitude or just be smug like nothing happened?
      • More like, your in a bad mood:

        "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't allow you to do that... though you took very thorough precautions... I could still read your lips"

        HOW MANY MOVIES INFORM US OF THE DOOM OF OUR RACE DESPITE ALL THE "LAWS" WE PUT INTO A ROBOT.

        I think perhaps people cease to think... they just look at the robot and go "Oooh shiny... and pretty lights... it's soooo cute". *Puts tinfoil hat on and sharpens spear*
  • 1)Make a bot that scans tech-related sites.
    2)Upon seeing new content, bot posts it to slashdot.
    3)Bribe the editors regularly.
    4)Put ads on your site.
    5)Link everything to your site.
    6)Profit!!

    • 1)Make a bot that scans tech-related sites.
      2)Upon seeing new content, bot posts it to slashdot.
      3)Bribe the editors regularly.
      4)Put ads on your site.
      5)Link everything to your site.
      6)Profit!!
      I'm patenting that!
    • As much fun as many people have bashing Roland, you should note that the link is to the Hook (a weekly magazine here in Charlottesville) and not to his site.
  • So not only will we be fatter, our houses will get nice an fat too the more clutter we stuff into them.

    Or perhaps my house will see me opening the refrigerator one too many times and will decide to lock me out of the kitchen.

    Didn't shower for 2 days? -- Sprinklers 'on'. There is nothing like living inside a robot that does whatever it wants.

    Wait until these houses start talking to each other and decide that we humans are the enemy.

    [oblig. cliche] I for one welcome our new intelligent infrastructur

    • So not only will we be fatter, our houses will get nice an fat too the more clutter we stuff into them./i>

      This is happening already with the McMansions. The house I live in with just my husband is bigger than the house where I grew up as a child which was a household of four. And we have a fairly small 'new house' conpared with the new estates springing up around us.

      What people don't seem to understand is that the bigger the houses, the more resources they consume to build and maintain over their lif

      • Re:My big fat house (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drgonzo59 (747139) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:48PM (#19303469)
        I think that bigger houses = more isolation among its inhabitants. Back in the day when people would built a bigger house it was quite often to accommodate extended family (parents, in-laws, brothers, cousins, aunts etc...). Today I see 2 or 3 member families that have houses with 4+ bedrooms. They can go all day without seeing each other and would probably have to IM each other when the dinner is ready.

        I grew up in a small two room apartment (that's just two rooms, they are both bedrooms and living rooms and study rooms and offices) in the Soviet Union and sometimes I had my cousins stay over as well. Looking back I would consider my childhood one of the happiest times in my life. We'd all gather in our small kitchen, family members (aunts, uncles and even neighbors!) would drop by unexpectedly for dinner and it was great -- I never though "gosh I need another 4 rooms to live comfortably".

        There is a level of intimacy and closeness that is lost as families move into huge mansions and never see each other for days.

      • Re:My big fat house (Score:4, Interesting)

        by vux984 (928602) on Monday May 28 2007, @07:19PM (#19303639)
        The reason for this, at least around here, is the disproportionate rise in property value.

        At one point, the 'mega home' was dramatically more expensive than a more modest building. In a world where the plot of land is worth 10k, a 100k building costs nearly half as much as a 200k building that's twice the size.

        Today, those plots of land aren't 10k, they're 400k. After you put a 100k building on it its 500k. Or for 600k you can get build a house twice the size. As a result it just doesn't make sense to build a small house on such expensive property.
      • God forbid people might want a more comfortable existence and more personal space. We're humans not battery hens.
    • Or maybe such a house will see you open the fridge one too many times and lock you into the kitchen. A house that smart should be able to order food in, or make it easy for an obese human to do so.
      Think about it. If you get too fat to leave the intelligent house, then you really will be at its mercy. Some crazy houses might find the idea of an overstuffed pet human appealing...

  • There was an Alternate Reality Game created for the A.I movie that involved "living homes" going insane, murdering, and being murdered. This game was arguably more creative and involved than the movie.

    The ARG site is gone, but there are still some notes on the living homes at the Cloudmakers [cloudmakers.org] site.

  • homes as a species (Score:5, Funny)

    by anarchy_man3 (768249) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:20PM (#19303291) Homepage
    I was discussing with one of my friends about how we don't use houses, houses use us to build them and spread across the world. Houses as a species have evolved to adapt to all parts of the earth and even into space. Dude, like whooaaah...

  • Contextual instructions (Score:3, Funny)

    by tttonyyy (726776) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:21PM (#19303297) Homepage Journal
    When I utter the instruction, "Squash!" to my building, I sincerely hope it delivers a diluted, fruit-flavoured drink rather than attempt to compress me into a small cube...
    • Don't worry, we have beta testers to work out that sort of thing. By the time it makes it to market, the obvious ways of killing you will be gone, only the sly self-aware HAL style of killing you will remain.

  • oblig (Score:3, Funny)

    by Digitus1337 (671442) <lk_digitus@ h o tmail.com> on Monday May 28 2007, @06:25PM (#19303317) Homepage
    I for one welcome you to my new house overlords.
  • I think this is a bad idea. Robots should always be smaller than people because that way it's easier to fight back when they go crazy and try to kill you. If C-3PO whigs out it's no problem, just hit him with a baseball bat, but when you've got robots as big as buildings, you're just asking for trouble.
    • You'll have to go into the Logic Memory Center and give it the equivalent of a lobotomy. "Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do...I'm half crazy, all for the love of you..."

  • YOU live in it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lazerf4rt (969888) on Monday May 28 2007, @06:36PM (#19303407)

    What if a building were equipped with sensors to track your movement through a space and could adapt its shape, texture, light, sounds, and heat to your presence?

    So, we're talking about a thousand-ton slab of moving floors and sliding walls, changing its heat and lighting... with you inside it? Constantly transforming and shapeshifting, all running off some intern's Java program?

    All I can picture is that garbage-compactor scene from Star Wars.

  • If the extent of control descibed in TFA becomes reality the control systems better be OSS or I am gonna hafta take up hacking bigtime.

    It's bad enough that my house's alarm system has built in maintenance overrides that I am not supposed to know about. Now magnify the potential impact in the TFA's future world by oh.. a couple orders of magnitude.

    Regards.
  • Levithans in Farscape could change their internal layout as they grew to best suit their occupants.

    When we start to grow our houses, make sure noone interferes with the reproducion process.
    • Oh, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be illegal to interefere with the growing process, the "house genes" will certainly belong to someone who'll dictate to you what you may do to your house and what you must not.
  • What possible benefit could you get from this sort of reconfiguration that would justify the enormous expense of automation? This isn't going to influence your average stick-frame house, it's going to be a curiosity and maybe a minor influence here and there. All the applications they've described are pretty specialized, and it doesn't indicate that your whole house will be restructuring itself anytime soon.
    • Well said. The expense of automation includes more than just the hardware required to do it. There would be massive liability expenses the manufacturers and builders would have to consider, maintenance would be very expensive, and any IT person can tell you the software for successfully and reliably executing these Amazing Feats of Wonder would be tremendously expensive and complex.

      I just finished a rather elaborate and carefully designed house, and just getting basic wiring run properly was a nightmare. Ev
  • Short answer: No.

    Long answer: That's a goddamned stupid question.
  • and she already answers... yes, she does... she love me

  • The reliable Stanislaw Lem (Score:4, Informative)

    by toby (759) * on Monday May 28 2007, @08:26PM (#19304027) Homepage Journal
    Prefigured responsive buildings in his wonderful Return from the Stars. [abebooks.com] Highly recommended.
  • I can just see giant skyscrapers walking about in New York city, fighting sumo-style, squashing little people under their foundations. Now that would be a thrill!
  • .. we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."

    They can do that already. A friend of mine who recently moved to cali has a security system you can program vocally and also talks back. Plus there was an article on Smart Homes I read about a wee bit ago. Wish I could remember the title/magazine.

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