skip to main content
10.1145/1858171.1858208acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesdisConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

WallBots: interactive wall-crawling robots in the hands of public artists and political activists

Published: 16 August 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Street art and political activism have a rich history of shaping urban landscapes. Our work explores the processes by which public artists and political activists contribute to public spaces, introducing opportunities for HCI researchers to engage with the people who shape the aesthetic feel of our cities. We present WallBots-autonomous, wall-crawling robots as a research probe for public expression across a wide range of surfaces and hard-to-reach places, including bus stops, whiteboards, streetpoles, trashcans, moving vehicles and building walls. We evaluate WallBots as a low-cost DIY authoring tool for public artists and activists. Our study of six individuals who extensively contribute to public spaces offers insights into the materials and practices behind grassroots public expression. We then leverage feedback from participants, among them a graffiti artist, light painter, political activists, and street musician, to evaluate interaction techniques for manipulating WallBots as a medium for public expression across a range of surfaces. Our findings expose a research space for technological interventions in the context of street art, and we conclude with design insights for magnetic kinetic systems as an approach for supporting engagement, expression and creativity in public spaces.

References

[1]
Ahn, R. M. C., Baggermans, G. P. J., Dijkhuizen, Y. A., Molenaar, N., Scholten, L. "KE: interactive kiting experience." Proceedings of the 2nd European Union symposium on Ambient intelligence. Eindhoven, Netherlands: ACM Press, 2004. 9--10.
[2]
Bødker, S., Nielsen, C., Petersen, M. G. "Creativity, cooperation and interactive design." DIS'00. New York City, New York, United States, 2000. 252--261.
[3]
Bao, X., Choudhury, R. B. "VUPoints: collaborative sensing and video recording through mobile phones." MobiHeld '09: Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Networking, systems, and applications for mobile handhelds. Barcelona, Spain, 2009. 7--12.
[4]
Bouchard, D., Maes, P. SoundMites: Embodied Emergence. http://www.deadpixel.ca/projects/soundmites/.
[5]
Breazeal, C., Takanishi, A., Kobayashi, T. "Social Robots that Interact with People." Pringer Handbook of Robotics, 2008: 1349--1369.
[6]
Brynskov, M., Dalsgaard, P., Ebsen, T., Fritsch, J., Halskov, K., and Nielsen, R. "Staging Urban Interactions with Media Façades." In Proceedings of the 12th IFIP TC 13 international Conference on Human-Computer interaction: Part I. Uppsala, Sweden, 2009.
[7]
Cao, X., Massimi, M., Balakrishnan, R. "Flashlight jigsaw: an exploratory study of an ad-hoc multi-player game on public displays." CSCW '08: Proceedings of the ACM 2008 conference on Computer supported cooperative work. San Diego, CA, USA, 2008. 77--86.
[8]
Cerrito, C. D. "Creating with cobots." Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 2010. 395--396.
[9]
Cheamanunkul, S., Ettinger, E., Jacobsen, M., Lai, P., Freund, Y. "Detecting, tracking and interacting with people in a public space." ICMI-MLMI '09: Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Multimodal interfaces. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 2009. 79--86.
[10]
Cuff, D., Hansen, M., Kang, J. "Urban Sensing: Out of the Woods." Communications of the ACM 51, no. 3 (2008): 24--33.
[11]
Dalsgaard, P. "Designing for inquisitive use." Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems. Cape Town, South Africa, 2008. 21--30.
[12]
Dalsgaard, P., Halskov, K. "Designing Urban Media Facades: Cases and Challenges." SIGCHI'10. Atlanta, GA, 2010.
[13]
Dautenhahn, K. "The Art of Designing Socially Intelligent Agents- Science, Fiction, and the Human in the Loop." Applied Artificial Intelligence Journal, 1998: 12--17.
[14]
DiSalvo, C., Boehner, K., Knouf, N. A., Sengers, P. "Nouring the Ground for Sustainable HCI: Considerations from Ecologically Engaged Art." CHI'09. Boston, 2009. 385--394.
[15]
DiSalvo, C., Louw, M., Coupland, J., Steiner, M. "Local issues, local uses: tools for robotics and sensing in community contexts." C&C '09. Berkeley, California, USA, 2009.
[16]
Eriksson, E., Hansen, T. R., Lykke-Olesen, A. "Reclaiming Public Space - Designing for Public Interaction with Private Devices." TEI'07. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2007. 31--38.
[17]
Fischer, P. T., Zöllner, C., Hoffmann, T., Piatza, S. "VR/Urban: SMSingshot." Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 2010. 381--382.
[18]
Fong, T. Nourbakhsh, I., Dautenhahn, K. "A Survey of Socially Interactive Robots in Robotics and Autonomous Systems." 43, 2003: 143--166.
[19]
Forlizzi, J., DiSalvo, C. "Service Robots in the Domestic Environment: A Study of the Roomba Vacuum in the Home." HRI. Salt Lake City, 2006.
[20]
Gastman, R., Neelon, C., Smyrski, A. Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents. Abrams Books; First Edition edition, 2007.
[21]
Graffiti Research Lab. Throwies. http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=6 (accessed January 30, 2010).
[22]
Höök, K., Sengers, P., Gerd Andersson, G. "Sense and sensibility: evaluation and interactive art." CHI '03. Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 2003.
[23]
Hirsch, T. "Learning from activists: lessons for designers." Interactions 16, no. 3 (2009): 31--33.
[24]
Jeremijenko, N., Arnold, J. J., Kavesh, W. Feral Robotic Dogs. 2009. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/feralrobots/ (accessed January 12, 2010).
[25]
Kinzer, K. Tweenbots. 2008. http://kaciekinzer.com/tweenbots/index.html (accessed January 12, 2010).
[26]
Kukka, H., Patmo, R., Ojala, T. "UbiRockMachine: a multimodal music voting service for shared urban spaces." MUM '09: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia. Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2009.
[27]
Kyng, M. "Scandinavian design: users in product development." Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: celebrating interdependence. Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 1994. 3--9.
[28]
Lifton, J, Seetharam, D., Broxton, M., Paradiso, J. "Pushpin Computing System Overview: A Platform for Distrbuted, Embedded, Ubiquitous Sensor Networks." Pervasive. Zurich: Springer-Verlag, 2002. 139--151.
[29]
Ljungblad, S., Walter, K., Jacobson, M., Holmquist, L. E. "Designing Personal Embodied Agents with Personas." In Proceedings of RO-MAN'06. Hatfield, United Kingdom, 2006.
[30]
Merrill, D., Kalamthi, J., Maes, P. "Siftables: Towards Sensor Network User Interfaces." TEL 2007.
[31]
Minneman, S., Mountford, S., J., Jeremijenko, N., Wodiczko, K., Turner, A., Davis, M. "Public information: documents, spectacles and the politics of public participation." CHI '98: CHI 98 conference summary on Human factors in computing systems. Los Angeles, California, United States, 1998.
[32]
Muller, M. J., Kuhn, S. "Participatory design." Communications of the ACM 36, no. 6 (1993): 24--28.
[33]
Paulos, E., Jenkins, T., Joki, A., Vora, P. "Objects of wonderment." DIS '08: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems. Cape Town, South Africa, 2008.
[34]
Pousman, Z., Romero, M., Smith, A., Mateas, M. "Living with Tableau Machine: a Longitudinal Investigation of a Curious Domestic Intelligence." UbiComp. Soul, 2008.
[35]
Rekimoto, J., Ullmer, B., Oba, H. "DataTiles: A Modular Platform for Mixed Physical and Graphical Interactions." SIGCHI. Seattle, WA, 1997.
[36]
Sakamoto, D., Honda, K., Inami, M., Igarashi, T. "Sketch and run: a stroke-based interface for home robots." Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems. Boston, MA, USA, 2009. 197--200.
[37]
Seitmger, S., Perry, D. S., William, J. M. "Urban Pixels: Painting the City with Lights." SIGCHI. Boston, 2009.
[38]
Seitmger, S. Taub, D. M., Taylor, A. S. "Light Bodies," in Proc. of TEL 10, Cambridge, MA, January 2010.
[39]
Shirvanee, L., Davenport, G. "The Viscous Display: a transient adaptive interface for collective play in public space." Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and South East Asia. Singapore, 2004. 259--263.
[40]
Taylor, A. "Machine Intelligence." CHI'09. Boston, MA, 2009.
[41]
Torres, O. Art Robotica (NYU ITP Show 2009). 2009. http://itp.nyu.edu/shows/spring2009/art-robotica/ (accessed January 30, 2010).
[42]
Vogel, D., Balakrishnan, R. "Interactive public ambient displays: transitioning from implicit to explicit, public to personal, interaction with multiple users." UIST '04: Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology. Santa Fe, NM, USA, 2004. 137--146.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Advancing Creative Physical Computing Education: Designing, Sharing, and Taxonomizing Instructional InterventionsCompanion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3656156.3658396(385-388)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2022)Understanding AR Activism: An Interview Study with Creators of Augmented Reality Experiences for Social ChangeProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517605(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2022)The Future of Embodied AI: Containing and Mitigating the Dark and Creepy Sides of Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and AIGood Robot, Bad Robot10.1007/978-3-031-14013-6_9(245-276)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. WallBots: interactive wall-crawling robots in the hands of public artists and political activists

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Other conferences
    DIS '10: Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
    August 2010
    457 pages
    ISBN:9781450301039
    DOI:10.1145/1858171
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    • IFIP: International Federation for Information Processing

    In-Cooperation

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 16 August 2010

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. autonomous agents
    2. public spaces
    3. street art

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    DIS '10
    Sponsor:
    • IFIP

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)24
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
    Reflects downloads up to 18 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Advancing Creative Physical Computing Education: Designing, Sharing, and Taxonomizing Instructional InterventionsCompanion Publication of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3656156.3658396(385-388)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2022)Understanding AR Activism: An Interview Study with Creators of Augmented Reality Experiences for Social ChangeProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517605(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
    • (2022)The Future of Embodied AI: Containing and Mitigating the Dark and Creepy Sides of Robotics, Autonomous Vehicles, and AIGood Robot, Bad Robot10.1007/978-3-031-14013-6_9(245-276)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
    • (2018)Steampunk, Survivalism and Sex Toys: An Exploration of How and Why HCI Studies Peripheral PracticesNew Directions in Third Wave Human-Computer Interaction: Volume 2 - Methodologies10.1007/978-3-319-73374-6_2(11-24)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2018
    • (2017)Data in the gardenProceedings of the 29th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/3152771.3152805(318-327)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2017
    • (2017)Urban Knitters on Interweaving Craft, Technologies and Urban ParticipationProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies10.1145/3083671.3083674(12-21)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2017
    • (2017)Critical Design Research and Information TechnologyProceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems10.1145/3064663.3064747(983-993)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2017
    • (2017)Networked PixelsProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3059454.3059480(299-308)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2017
    • (2016)Humor Engineering in Smart EnvironmentsEmotional Engineering Volume 410.1007/978-3-319-29433-9_3(37-57)Online publication date: 16-Jun-2016
    • (2015)Mischief humorProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology10.1145/2832932.2975583(1-5)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2015
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media