From Orphan to Avenger that wasn’t annoying enough, the students are “We have to go NOW!” comes the professor’s launching a large red balloon, which is outfitted final instruction. The students begin placing their with a rig to hold a video camera and is steered dogs and spare parts in laundry baskets, and into position by ropes. The balloon-cam captures rush out to their cars for a 20-minute drive to the “a god’s eye view” of the track.
Mission Bay Landfill. At the release of the feral dog pack, only one
On the way to the landfill, in the back of a van of the five seems to actually work as expected.
without seats, Jerejimenko explains that using It’s Mia Mia, the furry one, the one least likely to
toys “exploits the markets of scale for commercial become feral. Others are experiencing fits before
toy production. This is the least expensive way to starting. The wheels spin, and soon, most of
get your hands on corporate toys and rethink the them are spreading out over the dirt.
corporate scripts of interaction.” Each dog’s brain contains space-filling
She likes the i-Cybie, which she calls the “high algorithms that describe how to cover the ter-
end of the low end” for robotic dogs. She dislikes ritory and what to do when they detect a toxic
the Sony AIBO, saying that they are more expen- substance. Jeremijenko explains that since the
sive and not very interesting. The largest market dogs are programmed to respond to toxins,
for the Sony AIBO, she adds snidely, is engineering humans can learn by watching this response. It
schools, which pay about $2,500 per pet, even provides people with evidence. None of the dogs
with an academic discount. actually senses any sign of contaminants on the
“Jeremijenko is only site. The release of a gas from a canister, used for testing, is discovered by Chien’s i-Cybie robot.
part wizard; the other This dog circles back, following its nose, and runs into the canister and stops.
part is pure Oz.” Later at ETech, Jeremijenko says, “By creating these dogs and releasing them as a pack, we cre-
ate a mediagenic event that facilitates evidence-
In addition to UCSD, there are feral robotic driven discussion. Because the dogs follow
projects at Cornell University and in Dublin, the concentration gradients, they display the
London, San Francisco, and Brisbane, Australia. information with their movements. Anyone from
“We are forming an online distributed commu- a 4-year-old to a grandmother can understand
nity,” explains Jeremijenko, “which is interested what the dogs are doing. With a site like this, we
in the low-cost adaptation of robotic dogs into can have information that’s unclear and there
activist instruments for exploring the local are many diverse, interested people. There might
environment.” be an EPA report on the site or there might not
Her goal is to release the dogs on sites of com- be, and the report might be 15 years old or it
munity interest such as Mission Bay. “This site might not be. Where does this information come
was used by local military contractors,” she adds, from and how much of it is made public?”
“where they dumped several thousand barrels Finally, she adds: “What happens when you
in an unlined landfill right next to Sea World. It’s change who has the evidence? You change the
at the former mouth of the San Diego River so structure of participation between the expert
there’s a good deal of groundwater.” audience and the lay audience. People can be-
come the experts, and you know what? They are.”
When we arrive at the site, Jeremijenko is How much is that dogbot in the auction? surprised by the number of video cameras and Student Ribecca Lee spent a considerable journalists. The landfill is also used as an airstrip amount of time searching for the perfect used for remote-controlled airplanes, and throughout robot dog on eBay: “The dog must have qualities the day these hobbyists seem irritated by the like flexibility in order to be effective.” presence of both the dogs and the people. If X
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