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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
A Net-controlled robot reporter from MIT may be headed for Afghanistan.
Feb 25, 2002 | "Have you seen Rambo III?" Chris Csikszentmihalyi asks over the phone from his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I went to Blockbuster to see what movies they had on Afghanistan, and it was the only one I could find. It's amazing to watch now. The mujahedin are portrayed as Western cowboys, and the gist is that Afghanistan is this peaceful, freedom-loving country, and we should give them all the weapons they want."
Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "Chick-sent-me-hi-yee") is digressing from the topic at hand, which is his explanation of why he has built a satellite-linked, Net-operated robot that he intends to send into a combat zone ASAP. Since the invasion of Grenada, he notes, the U.S. Armed Forces have limited journalists' access to areas where fighting is taking place, and he finds this troubling, to say the least. He thinks the "pre-censored" war coverage on CNN is as one-sided as Rambo III, and he's especially terrified by the recent news that an unmanned Predator drone fired upon and killed three men who may turn out to be Afghan civilians -- a sure sign, he says, that we need to expand public discussion of the use of unmanned war machines.
"It will always be better if a human journalist is able to move freely," Csikszentmihalyi says. "But since they're not, I thought, If the military can have drones, why can't we?"
To answer his own question and drive forward the broader debate about remote-controlled drones, the 33-year-old engineer, artist and director of MIT Media Lab's Computing Culture Group began last December to create the first nonmilitary, nonhuman roving war correspondent, dubbed the Afghan Explorer. The Explorer completed several tests on the streets of Somerville, Mass., in mid-February.
"This is not a media virus," Csikszentmihalyi says, well aware that similar, provocative projects have been proposed, but rarely completed. "We're doing this."
No stranger to computer automation, Csikszentmihalyi previously helped invent a robotic disk jockey -- the "DJ I, Robot." Essentially little more than three turntables and a PC, it can randomly access a beat or sound anywhere on a record, as well as spin a platter at up to 800 rpm (although skipping gets frequent at 350 rpm). The robot DJ has even gone head-to-head with human DJs, Kasparov vs. Deep Blue-style, at electronic arts festivals and nightclubs. (It last preformed in Stuttgart, Germany, in January.) At present, he and co-creators Jonathan Girroir and Jeremi Sudol are adding a motion-capture device so the DJ I, Robot can mimic the way human DJs scratch. In a lighthearted mood, he writes of the robotic DJ, "I can't believe I'm paid to do this stuff. I'm as filled with wonder as a 22-year-old in a dot-com circa '99."
Csikszentmihalyi wanted to get the Explorer done in a hurry, so he relied on off-the-shelf parts, and modeled it on the Mars Pathfinder. Three feet long, 2 feet wide and moving on 14-inch diameter wheels, the Explorer has a video screen and a microphone on a "neck" pole that extends up 4 feet, so it can interview standing adults. "It's a teleconference on wheels," its inventor says.
