Famous Pittsburgh landmarks are the backdrop for BigBots, 11 giant robotic art installations.
The robotic art pieces, which went up on Friday, will be displayed through July 28 as part of Robot 250, one of this summer's festivals celebrating Pittsburgh's 250-year anniversary.
The collection is whimsical. Many of them are not what one might consider a robot, but each seems to speak to a philosophical topic currently being discussed in the technology community.
Here are some highlights.
Mower by Osman Khan.
(Credit: Robot 250)Mower, a robot designed by Osman Khan, a visiting assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Art, can be found on the grass at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. The pet/autonomous lawnmower is an allusion to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The ideal Mower robot would include navigational and obstacle avoidance sensors, according to Khan. Hmmm...Sounds like the Auto Mower from Husqvarna, only not as cute.
Reach, Robot by Grisha Coleman.
(Credit: Robot 250)The Reach, Robot installation at PPG Plaza by Grisha Coleman allows people in and around the giant overhead web to create ambient music in the plaza through their movements. The sounds played are based on Pittsburgh's African-American music history. The kinetic sculpture works from laser and pressure sensing devices attached to the web (made from PPG-manufactured continuous strand fiber glass) that respond when people move under it or congregate in particular areas of the plaza.
Green Roof Roller Coaster by Joey Hays (right) and Greg Witt (left).
(Credit: Robot 250)With all the benefits plants give us humans, shouldn't they have some fun? To raise awareness of just how much green roof architecture gives back to the environment, artists Greg Witt and Joey Hays built the Green Roof Roller Coaster as a thank-you gift of sorts. While adults have been scratching their heads, children seem to have no problem figuring out that the installation atop the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh is simply a roller coaster for plants, Hays said at a press conference. While providing "fun" for the plants, the roller coaster roof still maintains the usual functions of a green roof such as collecting rain water.
You're #1 by Ian Ingram.
(Credit: Robot 250)This isn't just a giant 12-foot tall foam hand. The You're #1 robot by Ian Ingram atop the Andy Warhol Museum is connected to a series of stations around Pittsburgh. When someone walks up to a station and touches a smaller version of the foam finger, the giant one on the roof points directly at them whether it's a block or miles away.
Robot percussion by Keny Marshall.
(Credit: Robpt 250)Keny Marshall's installation is officially called a "prototype for an infinite array of semi-autonomous percussive devices," but has also been nicknamed Crickets for short. The robots are all connected by wires and send or receive signals to each other to play their wooden blocks or keep quiet. The system is programmed to follow Dr. John Conway's rules for the mathematical game, The Game of Life.
Here's a map of where Robot 250 events will be held.
(Credit: Robot 250)Pittsburgh touts on its official Web site that it's the only city to have won "America's Most Livable City" award twice. But perhaps the "Take me to you robot," or "Go ahead, make my robot," slogans used for its Robot 250 festival are more appropriate.
Pittsburgh is famously home to one of the leading academic research centers for robotics in the country, The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which is also home to one of the country's leading roboticists, Matt Mason.
There has long been a rivalry between Boston and Pittsburgh as to which city is the tech leader in robotics. Both cities have academic and private research centers, as well as major companies, heavily involved in the robotics industry.
But in recent years, Pittsburgh has been playing up its ties to robotics through a series of public announcements, events, and community projects.
On the site for its 250th anniversary, Pittsburgh proudly states that the first robot was created in the Pittsburgh region, as well as the first polio vaccine and the first advanced organ transplantation.
The city played host to the RoboCup American Open in 2003, the preliminary U.S. play-off to the annual global soccer tournament played by robots.
In Spring 2009, due in large part to CMU, Pittsburgh is about to become the permanent home of the Robot Hall of Fame, which honors robots from both real life and science fiction.
And this year, as part of the city's 250th anniversary celebration, the University of Pittsburgh, CMU, and several area foundations, including the Heinz Foundation, are sponsoring Robot 250, a festival of the usual arts and culture with a robotic twist.
Pittsburgh's public art exhibition--instead of statues of cows, as many U.S. cities have done, or a Cavalcade of Cod, as Boston has done--is a series of robots called BigBots. The robotic art pieces have been installed at landmark locations throughout the city, including the Andy Warhol Museum, the Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.
Other events include various types of robot-building workshops, a robot film festival hosted by the city parks system, and a robot-theme theater production called "Astro-rma."
It's not so surprising that a city whose football team is called the Steelers is embracing its next-generation industry. But as we saw last year with the robots made of food, Pittsburgh's robot enthusiast community is not restricting itself to the old paradigm of a robot made of steel.
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