At its core, the growBot Garden project is all about constructing events that bring together local small-scale farmers and other food producers, designers, artists, engineers, and others who are interested in the future of sustainable agriculture, to discuss, debate, imagine and prototype new agricultural technologies. In a sense then, what we design are events. You could call us event designers or interaction designers or service designers. It really doesn’t matter that much to us. What matters are the events themselves and the people who participate in these events, who take the time to share their knowledge and desires, and work together, with us, to explore how design, robotics and sensing technologies might better support sustainable agriculture, now and in the near-future.

Each of these events does involve a lot of designed things in the traditional sense: invitations, handouts, interactive displays, prototyping platforms, documentation. Each of these events also involves the design of the space itself a learning environment, a space for hacking and making, a space for collaborative speculation.

But we don’t design robots, at least not yet. Probably, we never will. But, its our hope that these design events, at which we work together to discover and invent new agricultural technologies, might have other outcomes, such as building design literacy and technological fluency, fostering networks for collaboration among our participants, and in the longer-term, as we document and communicate these events to a wider audience, we hope the ideas born of the events might influence future agricultural technology research and development in academia and among the broader design and engineering communities.

- Carl DiSalvo

In the Spring of 2010 we put together a team of about a dozen students to explore the growBot Garden idea. In the early Spring, we held a “screening night” where we got together with local farmers and other food producers to watch a reel of videos on the future of farming. The evening ended with fantastic conversation and provided us with a lot of insight into how small-scale farmers view agricultural technology. In the late Spring, we held our first growBot Garden symposium. This day-long event brought together over a dozen local farmers with our team and we spent the day collaboratively learning about farming and robotics, and creating a series of conceptual design and prototypes. In a word, the event was amazing.

In early summer, we held another growBot Garden workshop, with a smaller group of participants, at which we explored how robotics and sensing might be used to in the context of gardening cucumbers. Just this past week, we held yet another workshop on the use of mobile mapping applications to support urban foraging. All of this is to say that our workshops at 01SJ are not our first workshops on this topic, and they won’t be the last.

Three events in six months is a lot of work. Its been deeply rewarding. We’ve gained a better understanding of the practices, cultures and values of local small-scale agriculture. Hopefully, we have given back to the participants as well. We’ve developed a handful of ideas for how robotics and sensing might be used in the context of sustainable organic agriculture, and these ideas will be the basis of our workshops and events at the 01SJ festival in September. And too, we’ve re-thought what it means to be designers and what it means to do public design. Our plans for San Jose wouldn’t be what they are without the past year’s worth of ideas and activities. More about those plans soon…

- Carl DiSalvo

Thanks to recent graduate Karen MacKay, who is apparently as generous as she is talented, the growBot lab is now home to her modular hydroponic vertical farm, equipped with water bottles modded to hold planters, ceramic beads, and a cyclical water reservoir. The farm was used for her award-winning master’s project, so you can imagine how excited we are to inherit such a work. We can’t wait to get planting…and to see what great things Karen does next.

After some brief introductions, Carl begins the day with an overview of different types of robots – large, small, utilitarian, and expressive.

Post intro, everyone participated in learning activities like the one below, which demonstrates how sensors detect moisture, light, and proximity. Other activities included a machine vision exercise and sensor-to-Tweeting mechanisms.

After the learning exercises, we took a break from robotics to learn about the unique spaces our participants inhabit via a farm-drawing exercise. Then we all dug into a banquet of organic greens, Benton’s bacon, goat cheese from Decimal Place, freshly baked bread, bean salad, kale frittata, and more.

After lunch, everyone got into groups and built their prototypes. This one attracts destructive pests, brushing the tops of leaves to disturb even the sneakiest of insects.

It’s hard to believe the day is done after so much preparation! After a short between-semester break, we’ll be right back to work, prepping our summer workshop series, where some of these ideas may come to life. We’ll also be getting ready for the zero1 Biennal in San Jose this coming September. Exciting times.

Over this weekend, I spent quite a bit of time building prototypes to try to figure out what materials work best. Since repurposed materials are desired (they articulate our message of sustainability), I put myself through a little experiment where I created the same idea using materials gathered from my house and materials gathered in the lab. Additionally, I created a timelapse of the creation of my first prototype (above), to serve as a prototype of my proposed documentation process for making activities.

The prototype below consists of a plant, a toy camera, a broken pencil, a salvaged lampshade, a button, 2 paper clips, and some string. It represents an idea for a system that could track plant health using sensors and machine vision feeding to a cell phone.

And here’s my diagram for the process, Sense-Think-Act noted.

The below prototype is made of a plant, bits salvaged from the scanner, some twist ties, newspaper, and wire. This time I was reminded that a reservoir for the water would be helpful.

And here are the bits of the scanner leftover post-deconstruction.

Both of these sets of materials create what I think are compelling objects, which leads me to the thought that providing a variety of found materials can lead to uniquely creative products. On the other hand, I know I have a bias towards using trash for art … what is your opinion, growBot Team?

Just when we thought we had refined our ideas about the growBot Symposium, we realize we have to get even more specific. Roles are being divided based on the many tasks we must fulfill, and we are full speed ahead until the end of the semester. 03.29 we had industrial design grad student Karen Mackay join us and speak to us about her master’s thesis in vertical farming. 04.01 we delved into more of the specifics of our activities, a subject that continued into 04.02.

Meeting Notes 03.29.2010

Karen Mackay

• problem: not enough farmland to feed people
• food miles … why can’t we reduce?
• disruptive products – how can we enact change/learning?

• project: mini ecosystem
• examination of hydroponics, aeroponics, soil substrate
• sources: window farms (brooklyn), science barge, valcent, epcot (good example)
• looking at affordable, modular, scalable
• can set up hydroponics to grow chard, beets, tomatoes
• her projects part functional, part beautiful
• tumblr
• worms to compost (from farmer D)
• planting: net cups used to hold ceramic balls, which retain moisture, lend to reuse
• felt prototypes – could this be a container instead of heavy plastic?
• project set up in architecture building (2nd floor; she urges us to stop by)
• daylight spectrum LEDs for lights
• kale, bok choy, swiss chard
• water bottle + pellets or soil or pellets and air
• all about taking parts that already exist and put it together. Window farm is awesome, but it’s a lot of work than a lot of time. Not accessable to people who don’t necessarily get into that. Simplifying process, but allowing room to get involved

questions:

• what are you going to do with regards to aethetics? - looking at felt + glass, currently testing felt pockets; next iteration to have more transparency; also looking to infuse glass, maybe one long unit with many glass pockets
• ID requirement: can’t do 1-off design; has to be manufactured-ready … what will final product be? Something repeatable. Maybe DIY – kit? Maybe instructables?
• where does felt come from? being bought (not made). From smart pots; large bags of felt. Any kind of wool felt would work. Maybe look into repurposing old sweaters
• final documentation? instructable (if DIY), if kit, then something else. If glass, then here’s what it is and how you install it.
• most bizarre substrate you’ve encountered? some people use styrofoam for vertical stacking systems
• do you plant seeds, or do your plants start with plants? they start with small plants. If starting with seeds, maybe start paper towel, get roots, then add.
• what are you doing after graduation? would like to work in sustainability. wants to find balance with doing art.

Lots of things that could get to the details. maybe get sensors. maybe series reflectors. maybe photoresisters.

How Karen describes her project … we need some sort of learning in the process. Aesthetics are part of the project.

“Before you can have social shift, you have to create a social mood that is willing to accept that kind of shift.” -Jane Bennett (political theorist from john hopkins)

Aesthetics: way to engage and get people involved in that conversation.

Carl’s feedback:

• Diagrams!! help to tell the story
• whenever you see a problem in gardening, ask How could I sense this? computers have built-in cameras, use that to get pixel value.
• we have a tendency to anthropomorphise. consider the intention of the photoresistor.
• Latour would say: we don’t need to think about intention (or thinking) of object.
• tendency to antropomorphise: “felt lets the plants know when to stop growing” one could say that the felt and the plant are in some sort of exchange. now it’s time to stop growing. air is mediated through felt. but that’s not an affordance that was built into the felt, but we are aware of it NOW.
• doesn’t matter what the sidewalk looks like to the computer, but it matters what it looks like to the robot
• is it possible to think of the world outside of ourselves?

Pelle Ehn’s Design Things

• person = a thing that has objectives, it extends “thing”
• public controversial things
• future of farm – brought up controversial issues

• what is the thing-ness of the farm?
• n defines thing of humans and non-humans

Collective language

think of objects, and not just people

• think about the felt
• we are to look at this from a perspective of doing design work
• we focus too much on people; WE SHOULD BE DESIGNING FOR PLANTS

Astrolabe

• Advent of portugese shipping
• John Law, writes about astrolabe
• what was the network of things in order to make this come into play? had to do with STARS
• cannot make astrolabe w/o stars
• so…what is the collective of things that go into farm and robot contexts, and how are we designing for them?

farm collective includes soil, water, light
// sensors also detect these things

notion that language is a type of object that is more transformative

ALL OBJECTS ARE THE SAME; thinking otherwise invariably leads to mistreatment of people

so … what are we reporting on? when we talk about a product working, we’re doing that thing a disservice.

people who have companion animals have different relationship with those animals than some people

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NATURAL

Cheese gets made because of the context of the place in which cheese is made.

how do we describe this collective? what is the role of the designer in forming this collective?

What if, for workshop, we started by having people think about DESIGNING FOR THE PLANT?

who are the actors involved in this who are not human?

nowhere in history of Pasteur is the account of the cows, which are a necessary part of the

• context of use
• object of design
• designer has to be neutral // but there’s no such thing as neutral

pre-1990′s: no discussion of objects in sociology or anthropology. what if we treated them symmetrically? (latour)

user research got us the escalade

Event

[SEE HANDOUT FOR ROLE DETAILS]

Meeting Notes 03.30.2010

What does it mean to design a compelling making activity, and a compelling made thing? Mature, reused materials. And some constraints. And objects of meaningful representation.

Meeting Notes 04.01.2010

CDC may be interested in maybe doing exhibit with growBots

Morning activities [see handout for more detail]

• Carl – overview
• Anna and Vasudhara – 2 + 3
• no camera, submit photos
• if we do this soon, we can take gigapan and take a panorama
• need questions that will connect 2 and 3
• Brainstorming: groups or 1 big group?
• talk with Lodato about hands-on activity

Workflow

• Anna to give Bullets to Laura. Also, what is the handout? Give that info to Laura, who will formulate copy
• cc Carl on all text-related stuff
• by 19th, list of materials
• same info flow for Afternoon activities

Laura: responsible for final copy

Need to combine hands-on + prototyping
Need to coordinate morning with afternoon

We do not want to overwhelm our participants

Documentation posters

• structured grid
• 4 big questions
• combination of a + b // 1-liners of text

Delisha: postcard

Desired: experiential learning

Puddle: How would a robot know not to walk here?

Meeting Notes 04.02.2010

We talked for a long time about Activity #3, where people are supposed to think about their farm and the needs that may occur there. The question of mapping and representation kept coming up…how could we visually, actively engage our participants in a context-specific, yet shared space? Vasudhara came up with the idea of a large farm where people could create plots or settings that represents their farm.

Everyone seems excited, considering it’s 4 p.m. on a Friday.

We’ll have another meeting this weekend, which should hopefully seal the deal. Or at least provide us with the basis of what we’ll be doing.

Monday’s meeting delved further into the agenda of our upcoming design workshop, ending with the beginnings of a discussion about a paper by Pelle Ehn. I didn’t take any pictures, but there are a lot of notes below.

Today’s agenda

1. Updates from the group about event
2. discuss Pelle Ehn paper
3. create schedule together

Notes

Event updates

• learning activities -> lunch -> prototyping
• pre and post surveys
• after: continue conversation where people can still keep talking about ideas afterwards

Camera Idea

• Vasudhara has created a Flickr account
• still in the works

Need: before spring break, add one more level of detail

To do: In an email to Dr. DiSalvo on Thursday:

• Learning activity + goal
• Prototype + goal
• define goals

More to think about

• what specifically are going to be the learning activities for the morning?
• don’t think number of activities, think that you have 3 hours
• APRIL 5 = DRAFT 1 MATERIALS DUE // DiSalvo to send schedule of what is due
• don’t plan to do things that we can’t pull off

What if we did an activity that starts off with, Describe the process of picking blueberries.

• How could you do this if you couldn’t see?
• now imagine you were picking blueberries only once every 3 days

Need to start with farmers’ expertise!

• cards achieve this, but we could go a step further
• need to get very specific
• what happens on the farm when you are away at the farmer’s market?
• whatever we do in the morning should show up in the afternoon

Design activity ideas:

• Mad Libs?
• cards?

MAKE SURE WE INCLUDE SOCIAL NETWORKS IN THIS

• there should be additive parts
• if it becomes about discovering specific themes and tools, make sure they have things like facebook and mobile phones
• would be awesome if they could use cell phones

think physical and fantastic

We talk about sensors and things, which is our terminology. How can we expect anyone to understand things that we aren’t experts in?

• We can find a list of sensors created
• We can define the basics, like resistors, voltage
• Important to know what can and cannot be sensed
• We’re not asking them to be experts in science, only in what they do
• What’s difference b/t being a designer and an engineer?
• Can we find a corollary b/t what they do and what they build? // farm is procedural

Will have a technical info boot camp!!!

Afternoon activity:

• should be additive
• specific to the materials of the farm and their practices (eg if participants request something to measure the health of the soil, then we say, how do you know that the soil is healthy?)
• should result in something physical
• particular enough to get ideas for summer workshops
• actually teach farmers things they didn’t know 6 hours ago

Be careful: it is embarrassing if you don’t know the answers

To do: activity emails

Anna: email morning activities (incl. goals, props, specific activities)

Vasudhara: email afternoon activities (incl. goals, props, specific activities)

To do: More things we need:

• Poster for GVU Demo Day (April 16) // Anna to get info; DiSalvo to handle; Ethiopia to make
• Laura, Ethiopia, Delisha to add existing posters to T-Square
• need to create documentation posters (Beth and Ethiopia)
• Carl to send out Laura’s text to use for posters

PELLE EHN’s Paper

Scandinavian school: began with workers
Required by gov’t to engage in participatory design

Project where he was teaching kids RFID and Barcode
w/in an hour created code to create music

• attractive b/c KIDS out in the streets
• was annoying to a lot of people
• this is a “dangerous thing”
• attractive to audience

What is Meta-Design?

• meta design about how you create tools that allow other people to design?
• how do you do that when the designer is not there?
• Things like photoshop != metadesign, but are open source things

Participatory Design as a method of ethnography

What we should think about is this:

• Paper opening up paper b/t different fields; sets up a new notion of what design is

When thinking about this project, here are some questions:

1. What are the objects and things of sustainable agriculture? We need to understand it as a thing (Latour)
2. What are all the non-human objects that are involved in this that we maybe need to attend to more?
3. What are the infrastructuring strategies we are using?
4. What is relationship b/t farms, publics, and controversial things?

//we can write a paper where we take these things into account

The past few weeks have been centered around figuring out the who, what, when, where and why for our upcoming participatory design workshop. Monday 3.01 we had an on-the-spot brainstorming session about what kind of workshop activity we could do, and then Monday 3.08 we were handed the assignment of figuring out exactly what we are going to do. Today (3.11) we worked on the details of the event. Pretty fun.

Now to the notes:

03.01.2010

Use this time to start thinking about prototype which is due Thursday 03.04.
DiSalvo has to leave at 3…please arrive on time to set up!

Thursday Task: create a prototype = Develop idea for workshop

• Strong idea: hacking with food producers
• bring idea in on piece of paper (typed or written)
• create lo-fi prototype

Let’s go around the room and brainstorm

Beth’s idea:

Vocab lesson, or

Take apart something

• need an object
• how do we know what object is a good object and what is a bad object?
• What does object do abstractly?
• I use scanner
• tickle-me elmo – has simple mechanism for emergent behavior
• good object = technically simple
• bad object = clock. Very little correlation b/t moving parts on inside and outside. Open clock = complicates time
• need to be able to take it apart
• SO scanner on table might not work, but you could use it to capture image
• when you take it apart, it must be interesting
• take apart phones – new ones suck (only circuit board), old ones are interesting
• once you take it apart, you can still do something interesting
• accessability – needs to be an item someone can get / has seen before
• Digital cameras are difficult – e.g. how does it go from electrical signal to soundwave

Lady Rogue

• Joel’s twitter thing
• what do we need to get this done?
• Can order twitter kit
• workbook? analog model?
• Can be a workshop on something else
• thought workshop was a brainstroming discussion
• improv ideas – what can a machine doing in that space?
• prop = image, discussion of how machines see, new framework for thinking about how to build machines
• sunglasses that see only 3 pixels?
• become like machines workshop

Thomas L

• grid glasses
• what are tasks that need to happen?
• testing soil? so litmus paper gloves?

Anna

• How can we understand robots to come up with better grounded ideas?
• integrate robotics into garden?
• Need: garden boxes, different kinds of sensors
• how big are boxes? Some little ones, some big for team thinking. Get them to think about what’s possible
• so, if we want boxes … think about logistics, we may need truck
• “think like a designer,” you actually have to make this, so how do you make this happen?

Vasudhara

• people want help using technology to facilitate community
• suitable avenue for understanding usage
• involving sensors…or not
• what would prop be? What is information would you like to share? So what are common resources?
• e.g. one woman wants to make low-sugar jams. She can’t make in her kitchen, b/c then she can’t sell. so what if there were a community space? UGA folks need these spaces…
• so how do we discover what it is they want to share?
• Mary’s input came up in a story based fashion; so maybe have them create stories
• What if…we ask them to bring pics?

DiSalvo

• Sunday: permaculture bus came to our neighborhood. Entire bus turned into school room incl. outside of bus – demo for composting, have chickens, model for closed-loop systems props = placards to transform inside of bus into a museum / learning experience
• What if we made these placards around farm, revealing some aspect of the space they might not otherwise have thought of?

Delisha

• maybe virtual version of farm?
• use a panoramic vid
• what if we can’t make it out to farm? How do we bring farm to people? Can we bring through video? Can we create immersive type environment?

Ethiopia

• Likes museum, box plant
• affix everything to plant; need to show what’s going on
• so have a kit for plant; disturb the plant to observe its effects
• could be a compelling exhibit

Continue to think about these things and what we would bring?

What about order? Need to have experiences with community to define workshops.

Another approach: just say this is an ethnographic type project, incl. interviews, but we want to have something where we make something together; we should learn like how we learn in kindergarten.

Sharing: since raw milk is illegal, some people own parts of cow. This is hack law. How can we own the cow?

Milk co-op: cost of selling milk too high, maybe that would be a resource.

what does a known community think its future will be? That’s an interesting question.

NEXT MONDAY! Need a date!!!

Incl. venue in workshop brainstorm

plant super power…what does it feel like to be dirt?

03.08.2010

Objective:
1. Lady Rogue’s presentation
2. trajectory for the rest of the semester

From here on out:
1. getting dirty / making stuff
2. slip back into readings

IMPERATIVE that we know what we want going into workshop and how to talk about it from a research perspective

Lady Rogue’s Presentation

What do robots see? How do you think that robots see?

First, participants were asked how to draw a picture of how they think a robot sees. Then they are put in groups and asked to create a basic, word-based algorithm for an eggplant picture based on a picture of an eggplant. Then groups swap algorithms to see what might work for their picture (which is distinct from the pictures used by another team).

Participants then engage in exercise where they create a basic algorithm for an apple picking robot, which is a Sally doll (think Nightmare Before Christmas). It’s underneath the box below. Should have taken pics of actual trees (d’oh).

Ethiopia fills out the apple-picking algorithm worksheet.

Close up

Vasudhara’s Expanded Idea

• Images
• thought bubbles

Could be written on in workshop or incorporated into pictures

Anna: Explanatoids: sticky notes on the world; could be interesting to do on a robot

• what if there were sticky notes on the world explaining everything?
• expert-generated content

Ethiopia

• plant in a clear container
• garden sensor from Fry’s
• nice way to transport

Talked about last week: idea of a day-long session
allows for eating + session

• first half of session = learning activities
• Vasudhara + Delisha idea (projected pics on wall)
• ask people to bring in pics; take pictures with thought bubbles
• end with putting together plant + sensor

afternoon = concept generation

• could use projected pics / videos in hallway (might not work due to too-hot projectors, possibility of blinding, etc.)
• BUT life-sized photos could be fantastic

Would like to have something done before graduating students leave

consistencies: small scale, urban/suburban, range of food producers

• general introduction about building trust + groundwork
• so no dependencies between brainstorming and hacking workshop, but a connection would be “helpful but not necessary”

03.11.2010

Today’s meeting was all about putting together the pieces of the design workshop.

We started out using this board, but in about an hour we had filled it with ideas.

We yanked this other board from the lounge area so we could sort the ideas. We promise to give it back.

Anna and Vasudhara work on their respective jobs for the project.

Anna and I taking a final stab at organizing our ideas before calling it a day.

Monday was our first meeting after GA Organics, and we had a lot to talk about – how the conference went, what we learned from the community, the people we spoke with. We also had a guest visitor – Barbara Stafford, who has a stint with us beginning in the fall. Lady Rogue brought a chevre brie – a gift from Decimal Place – for all of us to share. Delisha brought grapes and apples, and Dr. DiSalvo brought wheat thins. We all nibbled on these delicious snacks as we nibbled on our ideas….

Without further ado, the notes:

Introductions

Lady Rogue and Beth describe GA Organics, review wall o’ swag. Both give pitches, and Delisha gets it on video.

Question (DiSalvo): How do we structure/restructure our relationship with the public using design as a way to have the conversation?

Public act of creation vital

Room for improvement for growBots:

• Need to make the conversation more educational
• Need a better hook for the technologically savvy
• Draft media materials early

// Note: still need stamp

Question (DiSalvo): What would have appealed to engineers?

• Specs and prototypes (Stafford agrees)

Lady Rogue + Social Media

• Set up a hub at #goconf
• Set up growBot Brand
• Facebook

Question (Stafford): What is the next phase?

1. Contacting people we met through conference. Next up: FAQ on our site (DiSalvo must review); link should be on next email
2. Larger next stage: design and develop activity

Beth describes Food’s Role in the Built Environment and the individuals who gave the talk, all from UGA’s College of Environment and Design.

LR describes Virtual Farmer’s Market

• only harvesting enough to sell
• features like printable PDF abels
• farmer explained concepts instead of techy

Next Steps? Not sure.

• Perhaps have Anna research educational stuff?
• Maybe make mobile design kit + toolset (use a suitcase?)

Collect all contact info to follow up from #goconf

Need FAQ on website; DiSalvo to review

Create pages for describing program + meet the team

Diversionary note: GVU Brown Bag = we liked

LR met someone from Frito Lay who works in robotics and has utilized some of her knowledge in her own garden. // Frito Lay robot garden! Let’s go!

Who else was interested?

• UGA Folks
• Farmers with disabilities

Farming in the classr0om (a.k.a. what Anna learned)

• ways to work with the curriculum
• Farm to School – Gets kids excited about learning

Anna’s impression of #goconf:

• attendees surprised that Tech people were there
• had a conversation with someone who had specific interest in sweet corn
• someone interested in how to make large-scale farming sustainable
• people like robotic scarecrow idea

Ed classes

• people talking were educators; reThinkers (7-15 y/os) are kids in New Orleans
• dignity in schools
• leveraging passion can cultivate thinking
• give kids responsibility

Theory: Islands of Expertise // created by CoPI of CALL grant

• as youth, we develop
• we locate knowledge and filter learnings through them
• e.g. Fashion, developing and developing into rich learning experiences

What are technologies individuals are using? Where are they using them? Would be interesting to map.

Need to focus as we move forward; not quite there yet, but will be soon

1. Document opportunities – may mean saying no
2. Capture + Move On

Sometime in the next 2 weeks: spend an hour where we put up our ideas on the board. This way we can focus.

We are not going to divide tasks yet

At some point soon, we are going to pick a single idea and run with it. When this happens, we may split into teams to do certain things

Reason: everyone must participate; if not, then investment is not the same

Homework!

• Worksheet for design activity
• 3 sentences for 1-3
• what is this going to be LONG-TERM?

Who is participating in design event again?

April: just farmers

Later: farmers + roboticists

Challenge: step back, breathe deeply, not only what it could be, but what would you like it to be? What do you want to happen after the event??

So how could this apply to growBots?

Thinking about the actual technology, if this were developed more it could be very relevant to a farm, especially if it flies. It could avoid the crops, wandering animals etc with a pretty basic model of vision.

Thinking for the now, since the development time and costs are unknown, this paper is a good reminder of how much needs to be advanced to create richer robots. Also, this was a good immersive experience. Robotics is complicated! Half the time, I had NO idea what on earth they were talking about. I got the impression that they were trying to write ‘simply’, but most of the math symbols/language was beyond me. Like, “robust sensory-motor mapping” – although I have a basic idea of what it means – doesn’t trigger specific examples in my head, nor does ‘unrestrained robot’, nor Hi,j(n) = Didj(n) x Ii,j+l (n) – Di,jI (n) x Ii,j(n). We should try to identify key terms in robotics and keep this in mind when we’re trying to explain some even more basic robotics concepts. Once you get past the jargon, it’s pretty cool stuff.