Whew! Just shook the dust and pine needles out of my hair, but several sticky ideas are still lodged in my noggin. AMF 14 was, in my opinion, very fruitful and DEFINITELY an improvement on last year. There was an amazing amount of cooperation, collaboration, and cross-genre pollination. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen. One thing that became very clear to me is that there are a lot of very smart weirdos in our community(ies), and we have much to learn from each other. AMF was definitely an example of applied imagination with a generous sprinkling of technical know-how. In the interest of encouraging this sort of idea exchange and radical inter-education, I would like to propose a project which could be a platform for both practical and theoretical skillshare: MAD SCIENCE CAMP. On the educational/performative side, I envision lots of skillshares and lectures, perhaps some Powerpoint and slide shows; collaborative experiments, workshops and perhaps a reading room/lending library. On the more practical/application side, we could have stations for, among other things, electronics/speaker repair, solar/bicycle power generation, water/chemical testing (a la Dancesafe), and communications (the nascent inter-camp CB project shows a lot of promise and should be nurtured). As an anthropologist, I'm much more oriented toward the social sciences. But I know many of you have solid backgrounds in a variety of hard sciences, from biology and electronics to chemistry and botany. I'm thinking that this could be a multi-camp collaboration, perhaps a guild of some sort where folks could trade off time there. Obviously the pool of insane geniuses is not limited to any one sound system or clique. I'm still reflecting upon my experiences, and many of you are as well. I'd be interested in hearing what sorts of ideas this sparks with you. What would MAD SCIENCE CAMP look like? Who would be interested in working on this for next year? How can we encourage radical collaboration? What are some potential problems with this idea?

Robots and Autonomy:

The EcoBot project;

 
For a robot to behave truly autonomously it will need not only to use its energy in an effective way but also extract this energy from its environment. This requires the robot to convert energy from natural raw materials and also deal with replenishing reserves and waste management. A major barrier to the widespread deployment of autonomous robots in remote areas (away from power utilities) is the availability of energy. The present work represents a first step towards addressing this fundamental issue. Industrial applications include those requiring ‘release and forget’ robots; where robots are required to accomplish a mission usually in dangerous or undesirable for people areas (such as perimeter/pollution/predator monitoring) with minimum maintenance. The waste disposal industry will be interested in extracting energy from food waste. This new technology also offers the prospect of ‘gut sensors’ for environmental sampling. Toxins/pollutants of interest could be monitored by its effect on microbial efficiency. Long term, this new technology could be integrated with EAP/active polymers to build self-powered actuators.