Envisioning the Robot Design Studio Eric Schweikardt Computational Design Lab Carnegie Mellon University tzacmu.edu The design studio encourages communication, creativity, and ideation. Often the domain of architects, industrial, and graphic designers, the studio environment has been shown to be effective in other domains, from software design to public relations firms. Robotics, with its necessarily interdisciplinary nature, is an ideal field for permeation by design studio culture. The Design Studio Anyone who has visited an architects office has experienced a design studio. They are characterized by open, collaborative workspaces and ideally, a high level of creative energy. Most design studios contain an abundance of supporting and in-process design material drawings pinned to walls, physical models, and clippings from periodicals which have triggered one idea or another. Many designers choose to work in the studio environment because it encourages spontaneous, frequent communication between designers. It is worth addressing the distinction between design studios in education and industry. A designers office exists to optimize creativity and workflow, and perhaps profit as well. Undergraduate architecture education co-opts several of the professional studios features, but ends up with a more competitive, isolated version. The aim is to provide students with the skills necessary to thrive as designers, but the “studio culture” that is created is often less productive and focused than we might find in a professional studio. Certain research labs bear a resemblance to design studios but are often less focused on materiality. The design studio, with its finished and in-process artifacts, encourages cross-pollination between designers and between projects. Often, in informal sessions, designers will “pin up” their work for others to review and collaborate 4. A key difference between the design studio and the research lab is the presence of formal critiquing sessions, or crits. Crits encourage thoughtful preparation and presentation, and often serve to kindle new design ideas or directions. In a typical design studio, the crit can help designers evaluate each others work in a more holistic fashion than through the day to day communication about design details. Wolf writes that, “designers benefit because the crit provides insight that can make them better designers.” 7 The Robot Design Team The design of new robotic systems is often carried out by a team of people over a fairly long period of time. Coordination of and communication between design participants can factor heavily in the success of the final project, producing a tightly integrated robot or a disjointed, buggy one. There are three core fields involved in robotic development. Mechanical engineers create the hardware systems and structures necessary for actuation, locomotion and stability. Electrical engineers create circuits which tie together sensing, power and communication. Programmers create the robots behaviors, knowledge and personality. Experts in the robot target domain are often included in the design process. It would be impossible to design medical robots without the participation of doctors. Robots for education require teachers, and those for the military require military input. Its important to note that these design participants are necessary to make a robot work, which is the goal that most researchers and robotics companies are heading toward. As the problems of basic functionality begin to be solved, it becomes increasingly important to make robots work well. Psychologists are needed to analyze the interaction between robots and humans. Industrial designers are needed to embody and optimize those interactions into a product. Ethnographers and sociologists are needed to evaluate the systems in the context of social situations. This is only a partial list. The Robot Design Studio With the number and variety of participants in a typical robotic design project, communication and close collaboration become paramount. The design studio, with spontaneous communication and structured critiquing sessions, is an ideal environment for robotics development. The design studio encourages cross-pollination between designers working in different disciplines and on different projects. For a strict engineering design project, we might imagine a complex system that could be built by separate teams that have agreed on tightly specified interfaces to connect their work. A commercial airliner or a fully specified software application could be constructed in this manner. Robotics projects, however, are rarely precisely defined from their inception. The volatile technology, materials and algorithms that comprise current- day robots necessitate a flexible and adaptive design process. Rarely is a robotics problem fully specified. While it may seem odd to make a distinction between the design of an airliner and of a robot, the rate of chang