USC PRESS RELEASE
USC PRESS RELEASEArt, Archaeology & Automatons
In the basement of the University of Southern California's Powell Hall, a robot arm works 24 hours a day, moving from side to side over a cordoned-off sandbox, sometimes dipping down and blowing away debris with a built-in compressed-air jet to reveal buried artifacts.
The signals to control the arm come from operators all over the world via the Internet, the network linking millions of computers around the globe.
Conceived and programmed by an interdisciplinary team from the USC departments of anthropology and computer science, the installation - called the Mercury Project - offers the Internet's first public access to a tele-operated robot.
According to Kenneth Y. Goldberg, assistant professor of computer science at the USC School of Engineering, more than a thousand Internet subscribers, working from computers in Australia, Europe, South America and Asia, as well as all over the United States and Canada, have already run the robot arm.
The site has been in use and undergoing testing since Aug. 1. By early September, well before the Sept. 15 official announcement date, more than 100 users a day were signing on to explore the system.
"The system combines robotics, archaeology and interactive art," says Michael Mascha, the adjunct professor of anthropology who collaborated with Dr. Goldberg and a team of graduate students to bring the project into being.
Dr. Mascha and graduate student Nick Rothenberg describe the system in relation to the human body: Most Internet sites only provide access to digital information stored on the hard drives of connected computers. In the last six months, several sites have connected a camera to a computer, thus adding an eye whereby users can observe a remote environment. With the Mercury Project, a third level has been introduced. "An arm now allows users to reach beyond the digital domain, and physically alter a remote, real environment," Rothenberg says.
The system uses multimedia Mosaic software to provide access to the World Wide Web (WWW), a part of the Internet that facilitates the transmission of image and sound data in addition to text. Users who navigate to the system's electronic address - http://www.usc.edu/dept/raiders/story/index.html - arrive at an orientation window that explains the project and gives basic operating information about the system.
Would-be operators must first take a test proving they have learned enough about the system to operate it safely. Once certified and given computerized "operator's permits," users can proceed to run the robot.
Operators see a display consisting of a still video image of the area directly under the robot's hand plus a schematic map of the area the robot arm traverses. To move the arm, operators use a computer mouse to select a desired location on the schematic map. Clicking on the spot with the mouse signals to the arm to move to that position over the sandbox.
Buttons located in the display allow the user to move the arm up or down and, when it is down, to send a blast of compressed air into the sand, uncovering objects buried there.
The objects, including matchbooks, bits of paper, dollhouse miniatures and other items, were carefully chosen to create a consistent milieu - in this case, one suggesting the 19th century - such as might be found at an archaeological dig.
"The installation encourages a collaborative exploration, with each user posting his discoveries in the log, so that the common threads emerge gradually," Goldberg says. "The artifacts have been chosen so that they tell a story as multiple users uncover them."
The project's artistic aspects reflect Goldberg's interest in mixing robotics with other disciplines. In 1992, he built a robotic system to create images as part of an art exhibition mounted at USC's Fisher Gallery.
Goldberg and Mascha say their installation is a prototype for systems that could be useful in many existing applications.
"A version of this system could be installed in a museum," Goldberg suggests, "allowing scholars to view historical artifacts over the network while the artifacts remain secure in the museum's archives. It would be better than a simple image in a catalog, because a viewer would be able to explore the object in three dimensions, selecting from a myriad of viewpoints 24 hours a day"
Conceivably, one such installation might be in an actual archaeological excavation, allowing students to examine objects in situ.
"The system also has great educational potential," Mascha notes. "Students could use it to remotely explore a medical dissection or an architectural model that is difficult to transport. The system opens the door for students from around the world to enter a 'virtual classroom.'"
Creation of the system presented significant technical problems. The team used off-the-shelf technology for both the robot arm (an old commercial unit built by IBM around 1980) and the video camera (an EDC 1000 unit, made by Electrim Inc.).
The WWW computer linkage limited the flow of both command information from operators to the robot and sensory information from the robot to the operator. In programming, the team tried to "balance functionality with user interests" by creating an interface that would function quickly enough and perform enough tasks to be interesting to users
Goldberg and Mascha credited graduate student team members - including Rothenberg, Steven Gentner, Jeff Wiegley and Jurgen Rossmann, along with Carl Sutter and Rick Lacy from the USC Center for Scholarly Technology - with successfully working out effective compromises in this direction and "generally making this something robust enough to function in the full light of the Internet community."
Users from all over the world have recorded reactions to their experience in a logbook to which they're invited to contribute after finishing their turn at the controls. A French operator called it a "truly remarkable experiment; easy to handle, even from overseas." A user from Australia wrote, "This is without a doubt the most amazing thing I've ever encountered on the net, bar none. After 18 years out here, I didn't expect anything to be this surprising. It will be interesting to see where things go from here."
Goldberg and Mascha plan to give an extensive presentation of the system at the WWW conference meeting Oct. 17-20 in Chicago.