Lucy Suchman Centre for Science Studies Lancaster University Robot biographies Lucy Suchman Centre for Science Studies Lancaster University Transcontinental Mixtures 7 October, 2009

Haraway (1989) Primate Visions: 376 ‘Children, AI computer programs, and nonhuman primates: all here embody ‘almost minds.’ Who or what has fully human status?… What is the end, or telos, of this discourse of approximation, reproduction, and communication, in which the boundaries among and within machines, animals, and humans are exceedingly permeable? Where will this evolutionary, developmental, and historical communicative commerce take us in the techno-bio-politics of difference?’ Haraway (1989) Primate Visions: 376

I’ve explored the place of ‘exhibitionary technologies’ myself in the domain of robotics, e.g. these celebrity robots Cog and Kismet. Both are represented through an extensive corpus of media renderings – stories, photographs, and QuickTime videos available on the MIT website. Pictured from the ‘waist’ up, Cog appears as freestanding if not mobile, and Kismet’s website offers a series of recorded demonstrations of the robot’s expressive capabilities and interactions. Like other conventional documentary productions, these representations are framed and narrated in ways that instruct the viewer in what to see. Sitting between the documentary film and the genre of the system demonstration or ‘demo’, the videos create a record that can be reliably repeated and reviewed in what becomes a form of eternal ethnographic present. These re-enactments thereby imply that the capacities they record have an ongoing existence; that they are themselves robust and repeatable, and that like any other living creatures Cog and Kismet’s agencies are not only ongoing, but also continuing to develop and unfold.

Mertz, ‘a robotic creature that lives around people on a regular basis and incrementally learns from its experience’ (Aryanada 2005).

what did the robot see and hear?’ ‘Out in the world, what did the robot see and hear?’ Lijin Aryananda (2005) Fifth International Workshop on Epigenetic Robotics

PackBot is ideal for surveillance, and may serve as a robotic patrol to augment security. Whether alone or in swarms, PackBot possesses the potential for saving lives and revolutionizing the urban environment. http://www.irobot.com/rd/p08_PackBot.asp, accessed November 2002

‘For defense-related unmanned systems, the series of regional conflicts in which the United States has been engaged since the end of the Cold War has served to introduce and expand the capabilities of unmanned systems technology to war fighters. This conflict-driven demand has ensured the technology’s evolution and continued funding, with each new conflict reinforcing the interest in such systems’ DoD 2007: 47.

“‘[the armed Packbot] will be able to fire over four dozen different kinds of shotgun ammunition, everything from large slugs that would kill an elephant, to buckshot that would cover a wide area,” says Joe Dyer, head of iRobot's military division’

First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Robot, Akira and Nami (clockwise) From Alac, Morana (in press) Moving Android. Social Studies of Science

‘Seeing Like a Rover: Images in interaction on the Mars exploration Rover mission’ Janet Vertesi, 2009