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The short film Box caused a sensation in 2013 by effortlessly blending industrial robots and projection mapping — physical and digital. Bot & Dolly, the studio behind Box, specialized in robotic cinematography until it was bought by Google in 2013, becoming part of Google Robotics.
Sometimes overlooked amid the spectacular effects it developed in-house was the significance of Bot & Dolly’s software platform: it was an abstraction layer that worked as a plug-in for Autodesk’s Maya design software, putting otherwise arcane industrial robots in the hands of any production designer who could wield a mouse.
In this episode of the Solid Podcast, David Cranor and I talk with Tobias Kinnebrew, strategist at Google Robotics and formerly the director of product strategy at Bot & Dolly and principal creative director for HoloLens at Microsoft.
Discussion points include:
- The creation of “beautiful” (or “artistic”) robots
- Bot & Dolly’s work on bringing robots into the film industry (including Box and the 2013 film Gravity)
- What it’s like to unbox a 17-foot industrial robot
- How “artistic” robotics differs from “traditional” robotics
- How current and future robotics technology will affect the way we think about the value of art
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Related links:
- Tobias Kinnebrew’s’ talk at the 2014 Solid Conference
- Kuka industrial robots
- The Bina48 sentient robot exhibition at the New Museum in New York
- Paper by 53
- Klaus Obermaier’s Apparition, which blends projection mapping and dance
Image via Roland Molnár on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.