Robot Socle Rose, a moving installation that sings

In collaboration with Swiss performance artist Geneviève Favre the interactive installation Robot Socle Rose was presented during her solo exhibition "sweet dependence". An autonomous mobile robot is freely moving through the audience while playing an a cappella sound track with love songs performed by the artist. The box moves around the gallery (Imoberdorf Gallery Murten), goes its way without collisions, seems to seek something or someone, stops from time to time, and resumes its path to invisible goals coming near the spectators without touching them.

"Where are you my love... something new begins with you... summer, winter, autumn, spring... in front of you..."

Technically, the robot is not moving randomly but knows continuously where it is thanks to its localization abilities. This allows to systematically cover the whole area and avoid that the robot gets trapped. Once it determines a new goal position, obstacle avoidance makes that the goal is reached regardless the tricks of the interacting spectators. This gives an insistent character to the motion of the box. Under the pink cloth, we can find a SmartRob, a VME-based multi-axis controller with two Sick laser scanners.