3 years agoThe Tweenbot is a cardboard-bodied, human-dependent robot that navigates the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Tweenbot has equipped with a flag stating its intended destination, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal. Kacie Kinzer, the student of Tisch School of the Arts created the tweenbot for his art experiment.
“Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot…
The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the right direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.” Oh, I love this world.
