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Watch this: Kinect-powered robot follows visitors at London gallery

Watch this: Kinect-powered robot follows visitors at London gallery

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Running at London's Tate Gallery earlier this month, "Fearful Symmetry" used a set of three Kinect sensors to interact with visitors.

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Robot puppet at Tate
Robot puppet at Tate

The BBC has published a short video report on Fearful Symmetry, an art installation which ran at London's Tate Modern gallery earlier this month. Conceived by British artist Ruairi Glynn, the installation involved the use of a large robot which traversed a darkened room using a ceiling-mounted rail — with the aid of three of Microsoft's Kinect sensors, it interacted with visitors, responding to their movements with a number of pre-programmed actions. As the visitors interviewed in the video note, one of the most disconcerting aspects of the robot is its apparently "organic" movement — controlled partly by a set of algorithms and partly by a team behind the scenes, it acts with an eerie mix of human curiosity and robotic determination. Check out the BBC's report for a fuller explanation.

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