Help Me

A miniature robot-car is placed in an enclosed space from which it can't escape. It follows the movements of the audience, begging visitors for help, and collecting portraits of encountered users.
Help me is a play on imprisonment, memory, a reflection on the nature of machines and their limits.

Help Me is an attempt to transform an inexpensive remote control electric toy car into an autonomous robot using off-the-shelf technologies. The challenges are both technical in the vision techniques for the car to recognise surrounding users and conceptual in the design of a system of behaviors responding to users' actions.

Help Me was first presented at Infiltrations Digitales (Brussels), in November 2004. The second version was exhibited at Beursschouwburg, Brussels beginning of 2005.

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