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In this workshop participants will build primitive bots possessing synthetic emotions, exploring the possibility of of emotional connection between man and machines. this animated lifelikes help realize a thought experiment put forth by Valentino Braitenberg, on the matter of synthetic psychology.
We start the workshop with physical exercises using sensory deprivation techniques (and bondage) to simulate the limiting world bots perceive and react to. After a discussion and a quick soldering tutorial we go into robot building. Our bots do not use binary logic, keeping circuitry analog in the B.E.A.M* robotics spirit. The circuit itself is deceptively simple, with two halves interconnected to form a base responsive/exploratory nervous system.
*Biology, Electronics, Aesthetics, and Mechanics.