Madeline Gannon on robotics and computer science

Stefanie Wuschitz speaks to Madeline Gannon for the Open Hardware Europe Summit and the Coded Cultures: Openism festival that happened in Vienna on May 19, 2016.

Could you for the beginning tell us a little bit about your background?

Sure. My name is Madeline Gannon. I’m trained as an architect, but I wandered in a sort of nebulous field of robotics and computer science. So a lot of the work that I do looks at better ways to communicate with machines that can make things. So this could be 3D printers or laser cutters or industrial robots — this is what I have been working a lot with lately. But I’m really interested in how we can take these machines that have so much agency to make stuff and find better ways to interact with them that go beyond just our computers and our software.

How did you start madlab?

I made a website and it was there!

Ha ha ha! Brave new world!

Yes, exactly! Madlab was really started as a repository of the work that me and some collaborators and friends were making. A lot of it was really just focused on — again- seeking out areas that weren’t really developed in human robot and human computer interaction and finding really compelling ways to also bring design into that world.

So a lot of the work that I do through madlab is really a designers and architects answer to some of these big questions in human computer interaction or human robot interaction.

The work you do now is really poetic and very delightful. What is it that inspires you most to develop these ideas?

There is a lot of internal curiosity that I have that bounces back and forth between research and wanting to discover new ways of making and new ways of doing things. And then design, where I just want to flex those muscles and make something that is exquisite or intriguing. That’s the two worlds I try to walk in between.

So you worked also with these gigantic industrial robots. What if their is an error and the arm hits you, isn’t it highly dangerous?

There is no reward without risk! That’s part of the problem and the delight in working with these machines. It is quite literally like you are a lion’s tamer. You know, the people in the circus that tame wild beasts. You know that these things might be trained, but if you loose focus, if you loose your attention, that they could also maul you. So that’s were a little bit of the poetry comes back in, is with the risk. But the sort of black and white controls working of the machine it in the relationship that I can build with this anonymous object that just in how it moves it gives me a way to project empathy onto it, to see it as more than just a machine — even though that’s all it is — it’s just a machine. Doing what I tell it to do. But when you eliminate the technical barriers that we normally use as computer interfaces to a machine, you can see it as much more: you can see it more as a companion or an apprentice in many ways.

Do you think it will ever be Open Hardware, this kind of really big machines?

The hardware: it is interesting. It’s a really interesting time to be working with robotic arms. They are quite old technology, they are quite dumb technology as well. It’s just a bunch of servos and some steel welded together. What we are starting to see is that robotic arms smaller versions, they are usually called collaborative robots, that they are starting to pop up in the scene, these robotic arms that are under 10.000 dollars. Which is where laser cutters have come down from. Where you have these 50.000 dollars laser cutters that you can now do for fiber and glass.

It’s interesting, I’m fortunate enough to use a lot of the robots that I have through institutions, so there is still that access barrier, where they are just not giving you access to the actual hardware. But to be honest, what is more preventative to working with these machines is the access to knowledge and the robotics companies don’t make access to knowledge very accessible. So a lot of the work that I have been doing has been addressing that issue. How can you break down any of these barriers to creativity. With these machines and take that viable knowledge and make it available to various groups of people.

Do you think it could ever be normal in the future to interact with an industrial robot outside the factory?

I hope so, that’s what I’m hoping for, that’s what I’m working towards. You already see them out of factories in film sets, that’s a really exciting area, because it’s scenic, choreographed and somehow alive. There is also some people working with different arms on construction sites as a demolition robot. There is also light factories, there is an assumed elevated risk for it (…interrupted)

So that’s very interesting, they have started to trickle out, but for the most part there hasn’t been a lot of choice to bring it to artist studios, bring it to laboratories, bring it into kitchens and domestic settings. But once the cost goes down there is still a huge barrier which is: how do I make it incredibly easy and useful to use for someone without any technical background.

What was for you the biggest challenge in collaborating with robots? Apart from the knowledge factor.

I’m very spoiled in coming from the creative coding community where processing and open frameworks and others have documentation on everything. But with these robots if you are trouble shooting it is really the biggest issue. And you can call the robot company and they send you a pdf, and you call them again and they send you a different pdf, and you call them again and they send you a different pdf, and you just jump around, trying to piece together this information. So it’s very ‘stop and go’ if you are developing with them, because you can be stuck on an issue for 3–4 days. Someone somewhere knows and you just have to find the right pdf of that.

What I will be releasing at the open hardware summit is a new tool that a college and myself have been working on, that is an open frameworks add-on for robot arms. We are trying to put all the knowledge that we built working with robots and just put it out there, into this open source community. The robots themselves aren’t open source, but that’s another big challenge. But they are becoming more affordable, fortunately.

So it will be an open library, basically?

Yeah, we are calling it OFX Robot Arm, it will be part of open frameworks.

How did you get into programming in the first place?

That’s a winding path. When I was finishing up my architectural studies my university got a CNC writing machine, which is like a big 3D printer, but it subtracts material instead of adds material. And I really quickly hit the limits of what the software for that robot machine could do. This is what inspired me to learn how to program. Because I realized that whatever an engineer decided how this machine should be used that is the only way that it can be used. And I wanted to be able to have more open means of experimenting with this incredible hardware. And that part was the long rabbit hole down into programming.

What do you usually use to program?

I usually use Java or C++ and I work a lot with Processing and Open Frameworks.

And you are going to present this open CV add-on in Vienna?

It’s not an open CV add-on, that’s a different thing, I don’t want to confuse it or send the wrong message, but yes, it is an open frameworks add-on, it will work when we release it and show some videos in Vienna.

I’m really excited to see it! What’s your plans for the future, what’s your next project or next idea?

A lot of the work I’m doing right now is using robots to design and fabricate directly on your body. It’s a continuation of some of the work that I have been doing with designing on the body. And now I will close the loop and actually fabricate a digital design directly on the body.

So that’s the tools that we are releasing, that’s all the ground work, that’s the foundation work for this project, that I have worked on for a while. We are just going to let everyone else have the same tools we are using at the same time.

Do you see it as a design object or an art object or as assistive design? What’s your favorite way of how people could use this application?

The formula that I usually use is to make a new tool, that doesn’t exist before and then make design objects, creating objects with them. That has been my usual formula, that’s the only way to get people interested about software.

Ha ha ha. Really hands-on approach to software.

Exactly: ‘It can make something pretty, right?’

You design on the body, right, and then it’s becoming a real object that fits on the body, right? I was just wondered if you would put it back again into bigger scale and use these body forms as architecture models?

I never really thought of that, as jumping, oscillating between scales of building scale and body scale, that’s interesting.

So you are interested in the human scale.

A lot of that is conditioned, because that’s just what the fabrication machines are — sort of at the human scale.

How big was the biggest 3D printer you worked with?

The biggest 3D printer I have done was maybe a foot and a half by a foot. These necklace pieces that go around the shoulders. But are those printers that are three feet by two feet by two feet, so almost a cubic of material. But there are bigger ones out there that I could use.

Have there been shown in fashion shows, the necklaces?

The necklaces I did were distributed during fashion week in New York. But that is an old project at this point, that was 2012.

I still haven’t seen something like it before or after.

I have to stop here, because its already 15 minutes. Thank you so much for your time, sorry I was late.

Oh no problem, it was really wonderful meeting you and I look really forward to seeing you in Vienna.