Robotic Feral Public Authoring

= Community Mapping and Sensing project

URL = http://socialtapestries.net/feralrobots

Proboscis is at http://proboscis.org.uk/

Description

"UK-based creative studio Proboscis, in collaboration with university researchers, has similar interests in using sensor technologies to enable public action around environmental issues:

“The Robotic Feral Public Authoring project seeks to bridge the fields of experimental robotics and pervasive place-based public authoring. It combines low-cost robotics with geo-annotation in an innovative way, to develop a novel approach for galvanising social activism, on a local level, around environmental issues. By adapting commercially available toy robots with a variety of sensors and uploading the readings to a spatial annotation database for visualisation, we have explored new ways in which the exclusiveness of pollution sensing and robotics can be dispelled, and a new sense of empowerment promoted for grass roots communities.”

Proboscis follows up on these ideas with Snout, a project that embeds sensor technologies in carnival-inspired costumes and encourages communities to “scavenge” free on-line mapping services to help put the data to use. Moving more explicitly into the realm of potential political action, the Robotic Feral Public Authoring and Snout projects make direct connections between the public’s ability to collect scientific data and the ability to effect social change." (http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/the-rise-of-the-sensor-citizen)