Robot excess: machine histories and a hermeneutics of movement

• Published in: Construction Robotics (Online) 2024-12, Vol.8 (2), Article 18
• Main Authors: Slocum, Brian, Yablonina, Maria
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Architecture; Artificial Intelligence; Control; Engineering; Mechatronics; Original Paper; Robotics
• ISSN: 2509-811X; 2509-8780
• DOI: 10.1007/s41693-024-00129-7

In architectural and construction robotics research, we now have powerful technologies whose histories are only partially understood. Their ubiquity is matched by persistent historical narratives around their invention that have built up over time through repetition. Appearing in historical surveys and background research for theses and dissertations, the narratives of these tools are infrequently challenged—a situation that has implications for the conception and execution of the research projects that employ them. How do we begin to center narrative and politics in the context of a specialized area of research like construction robotics? In this investigation, we interrogate a set of iconic and influential robotics projects to expand the knowledge base around them and avoid inadvertently perpetuating harmful practices: Ross Ashby’s Homeostat, Grey Walter’s Tortoises, George Devol’s Programmed Article Transfer (Unimate), and Stanford Research Institute’s Mobile Automaton (Shakey). To arrive at a different understanding of these familiar works, we propose an alternative framework—a reconfiguration of definitions of efficiency and utility that we refer to as “robot excess.” Employing the novel method of movement as a hermeneutic device to examine these, we find that certain movements were interpreted as valuable and worthy of study and documentation, while others were considered excessive and, therefore, practically irrelevant. Further, we show that the observation, characterization, and interpretation of these excess movements relied as much on qualitative factors—in conjunction with the narratives we uncover—as on the definition and quantification of traditional machine attributes like efficiency or utility. This research aims to uncover less conventional takes on some commonplace historical narratives and, through doing so, to foster more informed (and inclusive) approaches to the implementation of constantly evolving technologies.