This project involves 2 physical bots that have pre-programmed photophilic and photophobic behaviour. Each behaviour is manifested through specific tweets which are parsed for emoticons and sent to the bots wirelessly as commands.
The bots are in essence very obedient Breitenberg vehicles capable of simple cause and effect relationships with outside stimulus - in this case light.

Background
Reading books on basic robotics while trying to learn about gearing motors, twitter API, strings, wireless protocol and mobile platforms.


Audience
Target audience can be anyone but I think children would be a great audience for this.

User Scenario
Simple observation.
Bots receive tweets and go through their encouraged light loving or light hating behaviour.


Implementation
The basic setup is 2 bots measuring approximately20 X 7 cm.
A laptop is beaming parsed data to xbees within each robot. Once activated the not explores new behaviour parameters. I would love if they explored the floor but I can also cage them in a space.

Conclusion
Building robots is difficult but programming robots even more so.
I think the most exciting thing for me is discovering how information can be transduced tofunction as something else- in this case motion out of tweets.
Broken:
2 hacked for continuous motion servos and one lilypad.