Feral Robot Dogs

It was a sunny day at the Mission Bay Landfill site in San Diego. Over the normally tranquil, sun baked ground came rolling an army of dogs, sniffing here, sniffing there. Following the dogs came an unusual collection of students, local politicians, Environmental Health specialists and journalists. They watched the dogs as they sniffed out environmental toxin emissions, following scent vectors across the site containing over fifty years of industrial waste dumping.

But these weren't just any dogs. They were feral robot dogs. They started their lives as inane children's toys, but through mutations caused by inspired hardware and software hacking conducted by students they have been transformed into tools for mediagenic activist sense making.

Putting aside a passing interest in the emerging hardware hacking movement, I find this fascinating. Fascinating in terms of participative sense making, rather than any techno wizardry. These dogs have cameras mounted in their rears, rather than their fronts (where their toxic sensing 'noses' are). The cameras are in their rears so they can film the people following them. These aren't so much scientific devices as a way of enabling lay people to make sense of the invisible threats in their local environment. People follow the dogs, observe their behaviour, talk to each other, have conversations about the significance of what the dogs do, interact with people they normally wouldn't have, and make collective sense of the problem facing them. The conversations and people's actions are filmed for further discussion and sense making later. This might not be as 'precise' as a scientist taking an industrial strength 'sniffer', analysing the data, writing a paper, and presenting at a conference, but it's a damn sight more real to those who participate. As such, is seems just possible that it might spur more action, make more of a difference.

If we let people create tools that enable them to make collective sense of their surroundings (whether in a landfill or a corporate organisation), are they more likely to take effective action than if they receive advice from an outside expert?

A pod cast on the project is available at IT Conversations. More info on the project at http://xdesign.ucsd.edu/feralrobots/