Slashdot Mirror
Robotic Ecologies
Roland Piquepaille writes "The University of Virginia (UVA) School of Architecture has started a new program about 'robotic ecologies' which wants to answer the question: Will robots take over architecture? As said the program leader, 'This research is not just about architectural machines that move. It is about groups of architectural machines that move with intelligence.' Apparently, buildings tracking our movements and adapting their shape or texture according human presence are not far fetched. Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."
What if you could talk to a building and it could talk back?
Then what about the wife we already have?
What if a building could adapt its shape, texture, light, sounds, and heat to your presence?
Only if it can also read our moods. How would it know if I am in the mood to read a book (good light source) or to watch TV (dimmer)?
And most importantly the question every slashdotter wants to know -- What if we want to have sex on the kitchen bench, instead of cooking? Would the building turn down the lights and maybe warm the bench a little?
I'm not expecting a machine to figure things out themselves, but its ability to learn on circumstances is important to serve us appropriately.
I guess it's human's unpredictability that makes robots imperfect.
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"Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."
Basement! I need a status report! Set sunlight shields to block! And where the heck is the virgin I ordered in the holo deck?
There was an Alternate Reality Game created for the A.I movie that involved "living homes" going insane, murdering, and being murdered. This game was arguably more creative and involved than the movie.
The ARG site is gone, but there are still some notes on the living homes at the Cloudmakers site.
I was discussing with one of my friends about how we don't use houses, houses use us to build them and spread across the world. Houses as a species have evolved to adapt to all parts of the earth and even into space. Dude, like whooaaah...
When I utter the instruction, "Squash!" to my building, I sincerely hope it delivers a diluted, fruit-flavoured drink rather than attempt to compress me into a small cube...
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I for one welcome you to my new house overlords.
Only if it can also read our moods. How would it know if I am in the mood to read a book (good light source) or to watch TV (dimmer)? Good choice, Dave, the on-line reviews are very positive.
When you're done, would you like to play a game of chess?
You can't take the sky from me...
So, we're talking about a thousand-ton slab of moving floors and sliding walls, changing its heat and lighting... with you inside it? Constantly transforming and shapeshifting, all running off some intern's Java program?
All I can picture is that garbage-compactor scene from Star Wars.
I grew up in a small two room apartment (that's just two rooms, they are both bedrooms and living rooms and study rooms and offices) in the Soviet Union and sometimes I had my cousins stay over as well. Looking back I would consider my childhood one of the happiest times in my life. We'd all gather in our small kitchen, family members (aunts, uncles and even neighbors!) would drop by unexpectedly for dinner and it was great -- I never though "gosh I need another 4 rooms to live comfortably".
There is a level of intimacy and closeness that is lost as families move into huge mansions and never see each other for days.
The reason for this, at least around here, is the disproportionate rise in property value.
At one point, the 'mega home' was dramatically more expensive than a more modest building. In a world where the plot of land is worth 10k, a 100k building costs nearly half as much as a 200k building that's twice the size.
Today, those plots of land aren't 10k, they're 400k. After you put a 100k building on it its 500k. Or for 600k you can get build a house twice the size. As a result it just doesn't make sense to build a small house on such expensive property.
Prefigured responsive buildings in his wonderful Return from the Stars. Highly recommended.
you had me at #!