: Joe Robot

: Design and engineering

The principal of modularity and therefore designed fault tolerance prevails thoughout the design of the robot: Physical construction with the possibility of rapid interchange of motor and sensor components. A USB nervous system facilitating expandability. Software control system incorporating motion bahaviours and speech recognition and synthesis (Eva Jacobus), and a vision system (Rob Burke) which together provide hardware flexibility. The following drawings detail the engineering designs of all mechanical components of the robot which provide for 29 degrees of freedom of which 5 head DOF are articulated through servo motors and 10 are loosely articulated through air muscles.

: Jo(e) in Performance

The Flutterfugue Performance (London 2002, Geneva 2003) is part of the Virtual Interactive Puppetry (VIP) initiative which aims to create a user-friendly interface and portable technology system to allow disabled dancers and others with limited physical mobility to regain or construct a new sense of empowerment through virtual movement with puppets and people in real space and time.

The London performance in 2002 was a collaboration with:

• Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London (Lizbeth Goodman)
• New York University, NY, USA (Ken Perlin, Clilly Castiglia, Kate Brehm)
• Performance Animation Toolbox, The Narrativity Studio, Interactive Institute, Sweden (Jorgen Callesen)
• Jaihn K Rose
• Music by Nick Ryan (BBC)

The performance in Geneva was a part of the World Summit Award Ceremony 2003 and was a collaboration among:

SMARTlab MediaLabEurope FluxusDance Counterbalance

Joe also participated in a similar performance in the Assistive Technologies Conference in Dublin in 2003.

The performances required the development of a modular motion behaviour library (with the help of Eva Jacobus), stream visual feed from one of the robot's eyes and experimentation of Jo(e)'s visual design.