For three months in the spring of 2009, Moodles was exhibited at the ARoS art museum in Aarhus, Denmark. It acted as an interactive "greeter", welcoming guests to the exhibition "Enter Action - Digital Art Now".
(See a few more images here including some from the exhibition opening)
With support from the LEGO company, I rebuilt and reprogrammed it to do a (pseudo) emotion test on the spectators: You hold the emotion sensor in your hand, and Moodles tells you how you're feeling. It does so by changing its facial expression, playing an associated sound pattern designed by Rasmus B. Lunding, and writing a text on a small screen.
Moodles had 11 different expressions, and of course the only purpose of the sensor was to detect the presence of a spectator - even though many people weren't sure whether the thing actually worked because of all the wires (most of which had dead ends inside the box..) and because I wrote the texts to be as generally applicable as possible, taking inspiration from horoscopes. Here are a few examples of these texts:
Relieved: "Following a phase of challenges and emotional turbulence, you can now enjoy a weight being gradually lifted from your shoulders. Thus, you are entering a period in which your fundamental emotion is one of joy and lightheartedness." [Danish: "Efter en fase med store udfordringer og følelsesmæssig turbulens kan du nu glæde dig over, at et åg gradvis bliver løftet fra dine skuldre. Du er således på vej ind i en periode, hvor du som grundstemning er glad og let om hjertet. "]
Sad: "You have recently been feeling down, a feeling which has not yet quite left you. Many other emotions come and go inside you and will soon dominate the sadness, but it still runs as a current of melancholy at the bottom of your mind adding depth to your other moods." [Danish: "Du har for ret nylig oplevet en stærk følelse af tristhed, som endnu ikke helt har forladt dig. Mange andre følelser trænger sig på og vil snart få tristheden til at træde i baggrunden, men den ligger endnu som en melankolsk grundtone i dit sind og giver dine øvrige sindsstemninger dybde."]
Peeved: "You have been justifiably peeved and irritated after an episode where you were treated unfairly by someone close to you. Even though you stood up for yourself, you can still feel the injustice of the transgressive behavior." [Danish: "Du har med rette været rigtig sur og irriteret efter en episode, hvor du blev uretfærdigt behandlet af en person i din nære kreds. Selvom du fik sagt fra, sidder det stadig i dig, at dine grænser blev overtrådt."]
Very happy: "One incident in particular has made you very happy, and even though you in your everyday life experience other emotions too, you still thrive on that warm and strong undercurrent of joy which tunes your mind in a mild, positive and charitable key." [Danish: "Særligt én hændelse har gjort dig meget glad, og selvom du i dit hverdagsliv også oplever andre følelser, så fastholder du en varm og stærk understrøm af glæde, som for tiden stemmer dit sind mildt, positivt og overbærende."]
For example, I realized that it would work better to write things like "you have been feeling.." rather than "you are feeling..". With this phrasing, the applicable time window for the statement is expanded, and hence the chance is increased that the statement will appeal to the spectator. My guess is that subconsciously, we all tend to look for circumstances or events in our own lives that will make the statement true and make it speak directly to us personally. If the statement only talks about right now, the present, and the statement is simply not true right now, you'll have a hard time convincing yourself to believe it. You're better off with something that might not be completely accurate but is not just plain wrong. Fixing the "time stamp" of the statement is risky, spreading it out and leaving it to the spectator to define what interval it actually talks about is shifty but better ;-)
The setup was as follows:
I'm very impressed with the LEGO hardware. At the time of writing, Moodles has been running continuously for 50 days (except for when the power chord had somehow fallen out of the NXT so that it ran out of battery), and there has been no trouble with the NXT or the motors. The power has been on and both programs have been running with no pause except for that one break.
The robot has no touch sensors (other than the one in the handle used to detect a spectator to react to), so all motor control is handled by the inherent tachometers. That means that the robot is well built ;-) and that the motors do not drift from their initial "0 position". Since I'm told there's usually a small line of people waiting to try it, I guess it's actually moving its motors a lot of the time during the opening hours of the museum six days a week. Quite impressive performance and better than I had hoped of the hardware.
The people at ARoS are very happy with the robot: It's popular with the guests and they find it cute.. Even some of the big, tough guards go and try it regularly :-)
Click here to listen to the sound pattern for "sad" (designed by Rasmus B. Lunding).
On the movie page you can see Moodles in action at the museum (look for the .mp4 files).
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