Because Everyone Likes Robots– Discover a TweenBot's Journey Through an Often Perilous NYC

Check out this feel-good project by Kacie Kinzer, a film student over at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts, in which a simple robot made of cardboard wanders alone through the streets on NYC depending on the kindness of strangers to guide its way home.

Via Tweenbots via Gizmodo:

In New York, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

This video is so insanely cute I nearly threw-up my morning yummy Rican coffee! Why is it I never encounter things like cute, cardboard robots while trippin’ on acid or ‘shrooms? Instead I come across neon-gremlins and cars trying to eat me. No bueno!

Video and TweenBot photos below!