Robots

Testing the autonomous chairs at Gagosian before the exhibition opened to the public. The chairs are scattered across the gallery floor, each running its own navigation system. The colorful upholstery (magenta, blue, yellow, green, orange) was part of Fischer's artistic direction. Even during testing, visitors who wandered in couldn't resist approaching the chairs to see if they'd respond.

Visitors interacting with the autonomous chairs during "PLAY" at Gagosian. The triptych captures a sequence: approaching the chairs cautiously, then warming up to them, then fully engaged. The chairs moved independently through the gallery, and watching people respond to them, sometimes cautious, sometimes delighted, was always the best part of the project. The woman on the left is my mom.

Kids were the best audience for "PLAY." The top sequence shows a young girl in a green dress approaching a pink chair, reaching out to touch it, then reacting as it moves. The bottom sequence captures a boy cautiously approaching a black chair, touching it, then stepping back to see what it does. No instructions needed. Kids just got it immediately.

More visitor interactions at "PLAY." The top sequence shows someone almost dancing with a blue chair, gesturing and stepping toward it as if they're partners. The bottom sequence captures a playful tug-of-war with a red chair that seems to resist being pulled. Every visitor found their own way to engage. Some treated the chairs like pets, some like dance partners, some like puzzles to solve.

A visitor figuring out how to lead an autonomous chair across the gallery. The sequence shows her signaling the chair, the chair tilting forward in response, and then following her as she walks. This was the kind of moment that made the year of development worth it: a person and a machine finding a way to communicate without any interface at all.

The safety warning sign at the entrance to "PLAY." Autonomous moving vehicles, don't sit on the chairs, don't leave children unattended, lithium-ion batteries, enter at your own risk. Safety systems were one of the most complex parts of the project. The chairs needed to be unpredictable enough to feel alive but safe enough for a public gallery with kids running around.

The vision system development interface for the autonomous chairs. The 3D point cloud visualization shows depth camera data being processed in real time. Each chair needed to understand the space around it, detect obstacles, track other chairs, and navigate without colliding with visitors. This was the diagnostic view used during development and testing.

A line-following robot on a running track, built for Puma. The robot was designed to pace runners at specific speeds, following the lane lines using computer vision. The idea: what if you could train to race Usain Bolt? The yellow markers indicate distance points on the track. This was filmed at night to match the lighting conditions of the final commercial shoot.

Computer vision development for the Puma line-following robot. The screen shows a live camera feed with regions of interest highlighted (red and green rectangles marking the lane lines), alongside the Python/OpenCV code doing the image processing: color conversion, Gaussian blur, thresholding, and mean shift tracking. The goal was reliable lane detection at speed, in varying light conditions.

Usain Bolt seated next to the Puma Beatbot. The Beatbot was a line-following racing robot built to pace elite sprinters on a track. This photo is from the commercial shoot.

A slide from the talk "Where Are the Robot Friends We Were Promised?" highlighting an interaction with Vector, a personal robot by Anki. The talk explored robots in popular culture (think R2-D2) and the joy of working toward making those fictional relationships real. Vector was one of the closest things to a robot companion that actually shipped as a consumer product.

"Where Are the Robot Friends We Were Promised?" Lightning talk at EYEO Festival, 2019. The talk covered the gap between robots in popular culture and the reality of building them, drawing on firsthand experience with the Fischer chairs, the Puma robots, and other projects. EYEO brings together a creative technology community that cares as much about why we build things as how.