34 research outputs found
Review of Anthropomorphic Head Stabilisation and Verticality Estimation in Robots
International audienceIn many walking, running, flying, and swimming animals, including mammals, reptiles, and birds, the vestibular system plays a central role for verticality estimation and is often associated with a head sta-bilisation (in rotation) behaviour. Head stabilisation, in turn, subserves gaze stabilisation, postural control, visual-vestibular information fusion and spatial awareness via the active establishment of a quasi-inertial frame of reference. Head stabilisation helps animals to cope with the computational consequences of angular movements that complicate the reliable estimation of the vertical direction. We suggest that this strategy could also benefit free-moving robotic systems, such as locomoting humanoid robots, which are typically equipped with inertial measurements units. Free-moving robotic systems could gain the full benefits of inertial measurements if the measurement units are placed on independently orientable platforms, such as a human-like heads. We illustrate these benefits by analysing recent humanoid robots design and control approaches
Gaze control modelling and robotic implementation
Although we have the impression that we can process the entire visual field in a single fixation, in reality we would be unable to fully process the information outside of foveal vision if we were unable to move our eyes. Because of acuity limitations in the retina, eye movements are necessary for processing the details of the array. Our ability to discriminate fine detail drops off markedly outside of the fovea in the parafovea (extending out to about 5 degrees on either side of fixation) and in the periphery (everything beyond the parafovea). While we are reading or searching a visual array for a target or simply looking at a new scene, our eyes move every 200-350 ms. These eye movements serve to move the fovea (the high resolution part of the retina encompassing 2 degrees at the centre of the visual field) to an area of interest in order to process it in greater detail. During the actual eye movement (or
saccade), vision is suppressed and new information is acquired only during the fixation (the period of time when the eyes remain relatively still). While it is true that we can move our attention independently of where the eyes are fixated, it does not seem to be the case in everyday viewing. The separation between attention and fixation is often attained in very simple tasks; however, in tasks like reading, visual search, and scene perception, covert
attention and overt attention (the exact eye location) are tightly linked. Because eye movements are essentially motor movements, it takes time to plan and execute a saccade. In addition, the end-point is pre-selected before the beginning of the movement. There is considerable evidence that the nature of the task influences eye movements. Depending on the task, there is considerable variability both in terms of fixation durations and saccade lengths.
It is possible to outline five separate movement systems that put the fovea on a target and keep it there. Each of these movement systems shares the same effector pathwayâthe three bilateral groups of oculomotor neurons in the brain stem. These five systems include three that keep the fovea on a visual target in the environment and two that stabilize the eye during head movement. Saccadic eye movements shift the fovea rapidly to a visual target
in the periphery. Smooth pursuit movements keep the image of a moving target on the fovea. Vergence movements move the eyes in opposite directions so that the image is positioned on both foveae. Vestibulo-ocular movements hold images still on the retina during brief head movements and are driven by signals from the vestibular system. Optokinetic movements hold images during sustained head rotation and are driven by visual stimuli. All eye movements but vergence movements are conjugate: each eye moves the same amount in the same direction. Vergence movements are disconjugate: The eyes move in different directions and sometimes by different amounts. Finally, there are times that the eye must stay still in the orbit so that it can examine a stationary object. Thus, a sixth system, the fixation system, holds the eye still during intent gaze. This requires active suppression of eye movement. Vision is most accurate when the eyes are still. When we look at an object of interest a neural system of fixation actively prevents the eyes from moving. The fixation system is not as active when we are doing something that does not require vision, for example, mental arithmetic. Our eyes explore the
world in a series of active fixations connected by saccades. The purpose of the saccade is to move the eyes as quickly as possible. Saccades are highly stereotyped; they have a standard waveform with a single smooth increase and decrease of eye velocity. Saccades are extremely fast, occurring within a fraction of a second, at speeds up to 900°/s. Only the distance of the target
from the fovea determines the velocity of a saccadic eye movement. We can change the amplitude and direction of our saccades voluntarily but we cannot change their velocities. Ordinarily there is no time for visual feedback to modify the course of the saccade; corrections to the direction of movement are made in successive saccades. Only fatigue, drugs, or pathological states can slow saccades. Accurate saccades can be made not only to visual targets but also to sounds, tactile stimuli, memories of locations in space, and even verbal commands (âlook leftâ). The smooth pursuit system keeps the image of a moving target on the fovea by calculating how fast the target is moving and moving the eyes accordingly. The system requires a moving stimulus in order
to calculate the proper eye velocity. Thus, a verbal command or an imagined stimulus cannot produce smooth pursuit. Smooth pursuit movements have a maximum velocity of about 100°/s, much slower than saccades. The saccadic and smooth pursuit systems have very different central control systems. A coherent integration of these different eye movements, together with the other
movements, essentially corresponds to a gating-like effect on the brain areas controlled. The gaze control can be seen in a system that decides which action should be enabled and which should be inhibited and in another that improves the action performance when it is executed. It follows that the underlying guiding principle of the gaze control is the kind of stimuli that are presented to the system, by linking therefore the task that is going to be executed.
This thesis aims at validating the strong relation between actions and gaze. In the first part a gaze controller has been studied and implemented in a robotic platform in order to understand the specific features of prediction and learning showed by the biological system. The eye movements integration opens the problem of the best action that should be selected when a new
stimuli is presented. The action selection problem is solved by the basal ganglia brain structures that react to the different salience values of the environment. In the second part of this work the gaze behaviour has been studied during a locomotion task. The final objective is to show how the different tasks, such as the locomotion task, imply the salience values that drives the gaze
Differences in gaze anticipation for locomotion with and without vision
International audiencePrevious experimental studies have shown a spontaneous anticipation of locomotor trajectory by the head and gaze direction during human locomotion. This anticipatory behavior could serve several functions: an optimal selection of visual information, for instance through landmarks and optic flow, as well as trajectory planning and motor control. This would imply that anticipation remains in darkness but with different characteristics. We asked 10 participants to walk along two predefined complex trajectories (limaçon and figure eight) without any cue on the trajectory to follow. Two visual conditions were used: (i) in light and (ii) in complete darkness with eyes open. The whole body kinematics were recorded by motion capture, along with the participant's right eye movements. We showed that in darkness and in light, horizontal gaze anticipates the orientation of the head which itself anticipates the trajectory direction. However, the horizontal angular anticipation decreases by a half in darkness for both gaze and head. In both visual conditions we observed an eye nystagmus with similar properties (frequency and amplitude). The main difference comes from the fact that in light, there is a shift of the orientations of the eye nystagmus and the head in the direction of the trajectory. These results suggest that a fundamental function of gaze is to represent self motion, stabilize the perception of space during locomotion, and to simulate the future trajectory, regardless of the vision condition
Modeling of human movement for the generation of humanoid robot motion
La robotique humanoĂŻde arrive a maturitĂ© avec des robots plus rapides et plus prĂ©cis. Pour faire face Ă la complexitĂ© mĂ©canique, la recherche a commencĂ© Ă regarder au-delĂ du cadre habituel de la robotique, vers les sciences de la vie, afin de mieux organiser le contrĂŽle du mouvement. Cette thĂšse explore le lien entre mouvement humain et le contrĂŽle des systĂšmes anthropomorphes tels que les robots humanoĂŻdes. Tout dâabord, en utilisant des mĂ©thodes classiques de la robotique, telles que lâoptimisation, nous Ă©tudions les principes qui sont Ă la base de mouvements rĂ©pĂ©titifs humains, tels que ceux effectuĂ©s lorsquâon joue au yoyo. Nous nous concentrons ensuite sur la locomotion en nous inspirant de rĂ©sultats en neurosciences qui mettent en Ă©vidence le rĂŽle de la tĂȘte dans la marche humaine. En dĂ©veloppant une interface permettant Ă un utilisateur de commander la tĂȘte du robot, nous proposons une mĂ©thode de contrĂŽle du mouvement corps-complet dâun robot humanoĂŻde, incluant la production de pas et permettant au corps de suivre le mouvement de la tĂȘte. Cette idĂ©e est poursuivie dans lâĂ©tude finale dans laquelle nous analysons la locomotion de sujets humains, dirigĂ©e vers une cible, afin dâextraire des caractĂ©ristiques du mouvement sous forme invariants. En faisant le lien entre la notion âdâinvariantâ en neurosciences et celle de âtĂąche cinĂ©matiqueâ en robotique humanoĂŻde, nous dĂ©veloppons une mĂ©thode pour produire une locomotion rĂ©aliste pour dâautres systĂšmes anthropomorphes. Dans ce cas, les rĂ©sultats sont illustrĂ©s sur le robot humanoĂŻde HRP2 du LAAS-CNRS. La contribution gĂ©nĂ©rale de cette thĂšse est de montrer que, bien que la planification de mouvement pour les robots humanoĂŻdes peut ĂȘtre traitĂ©e par des mĂ©thodes classiques de robotique, la production de mouvements rĂ©alistes nĂ©cessite de combiner ces mĂ©thodes Ă lâobservation systĂ©matique et formelle du comportement humain. ABSTRACT : Humanoid robotics is coming of age with faster and more agile robots. To compliment the physical complexity of humanoid robots, the robotics algorithms being developed to derive their motion have also become progressively complex. The work in this thesis spans across two research fields, human neuroscience and humanoid robotics, and brings some ideas from the former to aid the latter. By exploring the anthropological link between the structure of a human and that of a humanoid robot we aim to guide conventional robotics methods like local optimization and task-based inverse kinematics towards more realistic human-like solutions. First, we look at dynamic manipulation of human hand trajectories while playing with a yoyo. By recording human yoyo playing, we identify the control scheme used as well as a detailed dynamic model of the hand-yoyo system. Using optimization this model is then used to implement stable yoyo-playing within the kinematic and dynamic limits of the humanoid HRP-2. The thesis then extends its focus to human and humanoid locomotion. We take inspiration from human neuroscience research on the role of the head in human walking and implement a humanoid robotics analogy to this. By allowing a user to steer the head of a humanoid, we develop a control method to generate deliberative whole-body humanoid motion including stepping, purely as a consequence of the head movement. This idea of understanding locomotion as a consequence of reaching a goal is extended in the final study where we look at human motion in more detail. Here, we aim to draw to a link between âinvariantsâ in neuroscience and âkinematic tasksâ in humanoid robotics. We record and extract stereotypical characteristics of human movements during a walking and grasping task. These results are then normalized and generalized such that they can be regenerated for other anthropomorphic figures with different kinematic limits than that of humans. The final experiments show a generalized stack of tasks that can generate realistic walking and grasping motion for the humanoid HRP-2. The general contribution of this thesis is in showing that while motion planning for humanoid robots can be tackled by classical methods of robotics, the production of realistic movements necessitate the combination of these methods with the systematic and formal observation of human behavior
Robot manipulation in human environments
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-228).Human environments present special challenges for robot manipulation. They are often dynamic, difficult to predict, and beyond the control of a robot engineer. Fortunately, many characteristics of these settings can be used to a robot's advantage. Human environments are typically populated by people, and a robot can rely on the guidance and assistance of a human collaborator. Everyday objects exhibit common, task-relevant features that reduce the cognitive load required for the object's use. Many tasks can be achieved through the detection and control of these sparse perceptual features. And finally, a robot is more than a passive observer of the world. It can use its body to reduce its perceptual uncertainty about the world. In this thesis we present advances in robot manipulation that address the unique challenges of human environments. We describe the design of a humanoid robot named Domo, develop methods that allow Domo to assist a person in everyday tasks, and discuss general strategies for building robots that work alongside people in their homes and workplaces.by Aaron Ladd Edsinger.Ph.D
The Quest for Life and Intelligence in Digital Puppets.
Performers and artists wishing to make collaborative improvisations using three-dimensional computer graphics will encounter the following difficulty: the animation process lacks the functionality required for spontaneous, serendipitous, real-time interaction. While human motion capture makes such real-time interaction and the corresponding spontaneity possible, it lacks the expressivity required for non-realistic characterisation. My practice-based research study proposes digital puppetry as a solution to this problem.
My focus is on credibility as opposed to realism: the expectation is that the characters will behave in a puppet-like manner as opposed to manifesting the aesthetics â in terms of both movement and visual design â found in human actor-based motion capture and three- dimensional animated cartoons. The practical element is motivated by three imperatives: to improvise, to collaborate and to perform live. The primary question this study sets out to answer is:
Is it possible to achieve the same spontaneity and animation[1] in digital puppets as it is with tangible puppets and, if so, what are the mechanisms involved?
Unable to find a three-dimensional computer graphics digital puppetry software and hardware solution, I have devised what I call the GLOPPID[2] method, where GLOPPID is an acronym for Goniometric[3] Live Organic Performance Puppetry Improvisation Digitalia. The GLOPPID method comprises an artistic approach and a practical solution in the form of a Human Digital Puppetry Interface. It uses off-the-shelf three-dimensional computer animation software, which I have incorporated into a pipeline customised to suit my creative process. This pipeline is configured to transform ready-made computer graphics models into digital puppets that can be used as collaborators, thereby allowing the performer to experience the same kind of spontaneity as is possible in physical puppet performance.
My thesis asserts that it is possible to improvise with digital puppets, and I have devised my own solution in order to do this. I argue that the real-time, improvised manipulation of digital puppets offers creatively advantageous opportunities for spontaneity and expressivity. My research presents the technique of digital puppetry as an expansion of what I call the pro- puppetry thesis â the idea that puppets have dramatic advantages over human actors. It also contributes to the ontological discourses surrounding the Human-Machine Interface (HMI), trans-embodiment, the post-human, the illusion of life, and cybernetics. In addition, it explores how algorithms can be used in the arts, particularly in performance (see Kleber & Trojanowska 2019, p.101). It makes a timely contribution to the pool of knowledge, because I see digital puppets as zeitgeists â apt vehicles for human hopes and fears surrounding the digital and existential angst that is part of the fabric of 21st-century life.
The professional digital puppetry practice undertaken and discussed in this study requires both general, transferable human-machine interacting skills, and the specific digital puppetry skills necessary for project phases such as rigging and manipulation. This practical approach prioritises the physical, as opposed to the psycho-physical. Informed by the theories and practice of human dramatic technique practitioners such as Decroux and Lecoq, it takes the basic building blocks of movement identifiable in the segmented anatomy and rotational articulations of the actor-as-puppet, rod, glove and string puppets, and configures them in their digital counterpart in order to accentuate the odd by means of atypical combinations, economy of motion, and asymmetry.
My approach is underpinned by the idea that a puppet is uninhibited or influenced by its own ego, backstory, or emotions. Nevertheless, these properties are present in a channeled, and therefore changed, form that emanates from the Human in the Loop, namely, the digital puppeteer. In digital puppetry, the protagonist is a digital puppet operated by a human who is embedded at the core of the activity, and who simultaneously witnesses their own emotional responses as they are acted out in front of them.
My work demonstrates that non-realistic, expressive approaches to movement performance derived from human physical theatre techniques (including theatre clowning), combined with the use of algorithm-assisted techniques of rigging and manipulation, mean that the puppets are not under the complete control of their puppeteers. Instead, their rogue nature and irrationality enables digital puppets to satirise and subvert notions surrounding computer-generated imagery and artificial general intelligence, while avoiding exile in the âuncanny valleyâ (Mori 1970).
In this study the term puppet is used both literally and metaphorically. Deployed literally, puppet refers to a figure or object that is manipulated in real time in the presence of a puppeteer, in both tangible and intangible material formats. The term is used metaphorically in the sense that a puppet can be seen as an analogue of a human being that acts as a mirror, reflecting aspects of the human condition or predicament. My work expands upon an understanding of the quest for âlifeâ in physical puppets and the corresponding development of their ur-narrative â as described by Kohler & Jones (2009, p.346) â and extends this to include digital puppets. By combining the concept of this quest with Rokebyâs idea of technology as a âprosthetic of philosophyâ (2019, p.107) and with the notion of art as a mirror, I explore how distinctive features present in digital puppetry practice can be used to express truths about being human. The work employs a practice-as-research methodology that provides moments for reflection during the creative process, and reflection on the creative outcomes: reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. The thesis can be expressed in the form of the following formula:
Extemporising with puppets + the ur-narrative of puppets + art as a mirror + technology as a mirror = a pro-digital-puppetry thesis on HMI, AGI + what it is to be human
[1] The term animation used here refers not to the techniques of incremental, frame-by-frame posing of characters, but to the act of bringing them to life.
[2] âGloppidâ is also the name of a glove-puppet character invented for an ecologically-based travelling show performed during the 1980s (Childs 1988).
[3] Goniometric refers to the measurement of the range of motion in a joint
Producing Humans: An Anthropology of Social and Cognitive Robots
In this thesis, I ask how the human is produced in robotics research,
focussing specifically on the work that is done to create humanoid robots
that exhibit social and intelligent behaviour. Robots, like other technologies,
are often presented as the result of the systematic application of progressive
scientific knowledge over time, and thus emerging as inevitable, ahistorical,
and a-territorial entities. However, as we shall see, the robotâs existence as a
recognisable whole, as well as the various ways in which researchers
attempt to shape, animate and imbue it âhuman-likeâ qualities, is in fact the
result of specific events, in specific geographical and cultural locations.
Through an ethnographic investigation of the sites in which robotics
research takes place, I describe and analyse how, in robotics research,
robotics researchers are reflecting, reproducing, producing, and sometimes
challenging, core assumptions about what it means to be human.
The dissertation draws on three and a half years of ethnographic
research across a number of robotics research laboratories and field sites in
Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States between April 2016 and
December 2019. It also includes an investigation of the sites where robotics
knowledge is disseminated and evaluated, such as conferences and field test
sites. Through a combination of participant and non-participant observation,
interviews, and textual analysis, I explore how the robot reveals
assumptions about the human, revealing both individual, localised
engineering cultures, as well as wider Euro-American imaginaries.
In this dissertation, I build on existing ethnographies of laboratory
work and technological production, which investigate scientific laboratories
as cultural sites. I also contribute to contemporary debates in anthropology
and posthumanist theory, which question the foundational assumptions of
humanism. While contemporary scholarship has attempted to move beyond
the nature/culture binary by articulating a multitude of reconfigurations and
boundary negotiations, I argue that this is done by neglecting the body.
In order to address this gap, I bring together two complementary
conceptual devices. First, I employ the embodiment philosophy of Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (2012; 1968) particularly his emphasis on the body as a site
of knowing the world. Second, I use the core anthropological concept of the
âfetishâ as elaborated by William Pietz (1985). By interrogating the robot as
âfetishâ, I elaborate how the robot is simultaneously a territorialised,
historicised, personalised, and reified object. This facilitates an exploration
of the disparate, and often contradictory nature, of the relations between
people and objects.
In my thesis, I find many boundary reconfigurations and dissolutions
between the human and the robot. However, deviating from the relational
ontology dominant in the anthropology of technology, I discover an
enduring asymmetry between the human and the robot, with the living body
emerging as a durable category that cannot be reasoned away. Thus, my
thesis questions how the existing literature might obscure important
questions about the category of the human by focusing disproportionately
on the blurring and/or blurred nature of human/non-human boundaries.
Ultimately, I argue for a collaborative and emergent configuration of the
human, and its relationship with the world, that is at once both relational
and embodied.
This dissertation is structured as follows. An initial introductory
chapter is followed by a chapter documenting the literature review and
conceptual framework. This is followed by four chapters that correspond to
the four aspects of the fetish in Pietzâs model: Historicisation,
Territorialisation, Reification and Personalisation. These chapters alternate
between scholarly sources and ethnographic data. In Historicisation, using
existing scholarship, I trace the history of the robot object, including the
continuities and discontinuities that led to its creation, as well as the futures
that are implicated in its identity. This is followed by the Territorialisation
chapter, in which ethnographic data is used to interrogate the robotâs
materiality, as well as the spaces in which it is built, modified, and tested.
The next chapter, Reification, considers the robot as a valuable object
according to institutions and the productive and ideological systems of
Euro-American imaginaries. This chapter integrates ethnographic detail
with existing scholarship to focus on contrasts between the dominant image
of imminent super-human intelligence and the human interventions and
social relationships necessary to produce the illusion of robot autonomy.
Finally, the chapter Personalisation brings ethnographic attention to the
intensely personal way that the robot-as-fetish is experienced in an
encounter with an embodied person, understood through the lens of
Merleau-Pontyâs embodiment philosophy. In the final chapter, I draw
together the various strands to articulate how understanding the robot as a
fetish, underscored by Merleau-Pontyâs embodiment phenomenology, can
provide useful resources for developing an alternative understanding of the
human in anthropology without dissolving it all together
Critical Techno-dramaturgy: Mobilizing Embodied Perception in Intermedial Performance
This dissertation attends to the ways in which the deployment of technological devices in twenty-first-century intermedial performance might influence the audience membersâ perception of the
relationship between humans and technology. Drawing upon the work of scholars in the fields of
new media, performance studies, and the philosophy of technology, I argue that intermedial
performance artists reinvigorate the role of the human body in performance by mobilizing
embodiment as a techno-dramaturgical strategy for shaping the audience membersâ perception of
human-machine interaction. Chapter One surveys the history of performance and technology
from the ancient Greek theatre to twentieth-century performance, with particular emphasis on the
conceptual significance of techne and poiesis in dramatic theatre. Chapter Two examines the
theories of intermediality in performance as well as the co-evolutionary relationship between
human beings and technicity in order to delineate the analytical and dramaturgical potential of an
original conceptual framework known as critical techno-dramaturgy. Chapter Three explores the
interplay between embodiment, technology, and space in intermedial performance and its effects
on the audience membersâ awareness of their embodied existence as they navigate the cityscape
with bicycles, handheld computers, and mobile phones. Chapter Four investigates the intersection
of performance and techno-anxiety by looking at how intelligent machines that appear to perform
autonomously might affect the audience membersâ perception of these anthropomorphic
technological agents in relation to their own bodies. Chapter Five examines how the construction
of the âcyborgâ as both a conceptual metaphor for and a material instantiation of human-machine
âfusionâ could impact the prosthetic relations between persons with disabilities and the
technological devices that they employ in intermedial performance. Finally, Chapter Six looks at
my involvement in the production of an original creative project that uses critical techno-dramaturgy
as a strategy for shaping the audience membersâ perception of the complicity
between digital media (particularly video technology) and the mediation of death
Feral Ecologies: A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Media
This dissertation wonders what non-human animals can illuminate about media in the visible contact zones where they meet. It treats these zones as rich field sites from which to excavate neglected material-discursive-semiotic relationships between animals and media. What these encounters demonstrate is that animals are historically and theoretically implicated in the imagination and materialization of media and their attendant processes of communication. Chapter 1 addresses how animals have been excluded from the cultural production of knowledge as a result of an anthropocentric perspective that renders them invisible or reduces them to ciphers for human meanings. It combines ethology and cinematic realism to craft a reparative, non-anthropocentric way of looking that is able to accommodate the plenitude of animals and their traces, and grant them the ontological heft required to exert productive traction in the visual field. Chapter 2 identifies an octopuss encounter with a digital camera and its chance cinematic inscription as part of a larger phenomenon of accidental animal videos. Because non-humans are the catalysts for their production, these videos offer welcome realist counterpoints to traditional wildlife imagery, and affirm cinemas ability to intercede non-anthropocentrically between humans and the world. Realism is essential to cinematic communication, and that realism is ultimately an achievement of non-human intervention. Chapter 3 investigates how an Internet hoax about a non-human ape playing with an iPad in a zoo led to the development of Apps for Apes, a real life enrichment project that pairs captive orangutans with iPads. It contextualizes and criticizes this projects discursive underpinnings but argues that the contingencies that transpire at the touchscreen interface shift our understanding of communication away from sharing minds and toward respecting immanence and accommodating difference.
Finally, Chapter 4 examines a publicity stunt wherein a digital data-carrying homing pigeon races against the Internet to meet a computer. Rather than a competition, this is a continuation of a longstanding collaboration between the carrier pigeon and the infrastructure of modern communications. The carrier pigeon is not external but rather endemic to our understanding of communication as a material process that requires movement and coordination to make connections
The Architecture of Soft Machines
This thesis speculates about the possibility of softening architecture through machines. In deviating from traditional mechanical conceptions of machines based on autonomous, functional and purely operational notions, the thesis proposes to conceive of machines as corporeal media in co-constituting relationships with human bodies. As machines become corporeal (robots) and human bodies take on qualities of machines (cyborgs) the thesis investigates their relations to architecture through readings of William S. Burroughsâ proto-cyborgian novel The Soft Machine (1961) and Georges Teyssotâs essay âHybrid Architecture: An Environment for the Prosthetic Bodyâ (2005) arguing for a revision of architectureâs anthropocentric mandate in favour of technologically co-constituting body ideas. The conceptual shift in man-machine relations is also demonstrated by discussion of two installations shown at the Venice Biennale, Daniel Libeskindâs mechanical Three Lessons in Architecture (1985) and Philip Beeselyâs responsive Hylozoic Ground (2010). As the purely mechanical model has been superseded by a model that incorporates digital sensing and embedded actuation, as well as soft and compliant materiality, the promise of softer, more sensitive and corporeal conceptions of technology shines onto architecture. Following Nicholas Negroponteâs ambition for a âhumanism through machines,â stated in his groundbreaking work, Soft Architecture Machines (1975), and inspired by recent developments in the emerging field of soft robotics, I have developed a series of practical design experiments, ranging from soft mechanical hybrids to soft machines made entirely from silicone and actuated by embedded pneumatics, to speculate about architectural environments capable of interacting with humans. In a radical departure from traditional mechanical conceptions based on modalities of assembly, the design of these types of soft machines is derived from soft organisms such as molluscs (octopi, snails, jellyfish) in order to infuse them with notions of flexibility, compliance, sensitivity, passive dynamics and spatial variability. Challenging architectureâs alliance with notions of permanence and monumentality, the thesis finally formulates a critique of static typologisation of space with walls, floors, columns or windows. In proposing an embodied architecture the thesis concludes by speculating about architecture as a capacitated, sensitive and sensual body informed by reciprocal conditioning of constituent systems, materials, morphologies and behaviours