Outerspace – Reactive Robotic Creature
by Andre Stubbe & Markus Lerner
2004–2006

www.outerspace-robot.com


Outerspace is a reactive robotic creature. Its motivation is based on curiosity, the desire to explore the surrounding space looking for contact. Touch it, play with it and watch its behaviour.

Curiosity

The movements of Outerspace are based on its curiosity in exploring the surrounding space. It looks for light, motion, finally contact. As he finds something interesting, this again increases its curiosity, to find out even more. The same thing happens in the mind of the observer, when he approaches the object.

Inspiration

The basic form is motivated by insect antennae that are able to make flexible movements in order to explore the environment. Outerspaces broad repertoire of motion actually originates from animals, both in the behavior of single organs and body language. At the same time, human gestures are part of the motion patterns of Outerspace.
Formal reduction and graphical abstraction invoke a wide scope of interpretations.

Technology & Materials

The body consists of three limbs, fibreglass pipes, connected by joints. Four servo motors control these limbs over wires and pulleys, three for the joint movements and one for the vertical rotation. The head, the uppermost limb, carries 5 photo sensors used as eyes for brightness and simple motion recognition. All limbs have capacitory sensors that react on human body contact.

Two BX-24 microcontrollers are used for input and controlling of the motors. The controllers are conntected to the serial ports of a PC, where all calculations are made by special Java software.

The project is at the edge of art and design involving various aspects of industrial design, physical computing & artificial intelligence. It was developed on the brief “Lustobjekt”, object of pleasure and desire, in the Digital Media Class at Berlin University of the Arts 2004–2006. It was supervised by Prof. Joachim Sauter, Prof. Frank Fietzek, Karl Heinz Jeron & Ralph Ammer.