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Eleanor Sandry, Robots and communication

Eleanor Sandry’s book provides a multidisciplinary entrance point for understanding interaction and communication design ideas for autonomous robot systems. The main focus of the book is on communicationmethods, traversing humans, animals and machines. The discussion draws on communication studies, cybernetics and cultural theory, including the works of Haraway, Hayles andMori (the Uncanny Valley), to mention a few. The book examines several robotics projects, such as a robotic art installation at the University of Sydney, the ‘Fish-bird’ project, and an installation with blimp-like robots called ALAVS (Autonomous Light Air Vessels) with which an audience can interact. Through these projects, the author drills down into non-verbal communication concepts, including kinesics, or body movements, and Levinasian ‘face-to-face’ communication and ideas of difference and otherness. Analysis of the installations helps to distinguish human communication from the parameters of humanoid and non-humanoid robot communication. The discussion draws on literary devices such as zoomorphism and anthropomorphism in films. At this point, the author could have mentioned film editing in the construction of animals on screen that appear to have human-like responses, such as Lassie and Flipper. The book progresses to humans and robots working together, in the same ways animals and humans have done so over a long period of time. It also considers how a robotic desk lamp, known as AUR, functions in different modes from reactive to fluentmodes, alongside contextual discussion on actingmethods, such as ‘appropriates poses to capture emotions’, derived from Delsarte, and the significance of ‘space between two actors’, influenced by the Stanislavski’s method. The book then introduces the possibilities of collaboration and trust, suggesting that humanoid robots ‘force people to follow a particular course of interaction’. It highlights the way robots rely on the ‘gaze’ even when they don’t have eyes, adding to the argument, the importance of kinesics, as well technological communication systems. These points are evident in the Fish-bird project where, when someone walks into the exhibition, ‘information is transmitted by wireless from cameras in the corner of the room, causing the robot to shift their gaze’. Sandry explains how this fits well with Derrida’s viewpoints on the animal gaze. The final chapter of the book turns to an Explosive Ordinance Disposal robot to demonstrate collaboration and anticipation between humans and machines. The book includes a discussion on the blurred boundaries between humans, animals and machines, which prompts a discussion on cyborgs, but the discussion at this level is brief. The analogy of the map towards the end drifts from the discussion in the preceding chapters. This is a point where there could be more reflection on static and dynamic forms of communication. Nonetheless, the book explores and explains well the ongoing intersections between arts and robotics. It clarifies important terminology, concepts and ideas that should have multidisciplinary benefits. The book has 129 pages and is a Palgrave-pivot publication divided into three parts with seven main sub-sections.