In this roundtable edition, we watched the Black Mirror episode “Hated in the Nation” and asked our Robohub team members: with many institutions focused on developing aerial drone technology, and in light of the pressing reality of climate change and bee colony collapse, do we see robotic bees in our future? Would swarms of artificial insects even be desirable?

In her book “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, Alice Calaprice asserted that Einstein probably never said anything close to: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Still. Whoever said it, it’s a haunting prophecy. With climate change thought to be forcing colony collapse disorder and threatening the existence of many pollinators, might swarm robotics hold the key to humanity’s survival? Could these robot bees ever be hacked to spy and become weaponised? In our roundtable we discussed the technology in the Black Mirror episode “Hate the Nation” and some of the pitfalls.

Swarms of autonomous, 3D printed drone bees pollinating the nation. Hackable AI, vulnerable to attack. Flying tools turned aerial enemy. Do our experts think any of this could happen? Is this type of technology likely or even feasible?

Our team share their thoughts:

Sabine: What’s interesting is that not everything in the episode is entirely crazy. We do want to create technology that addresses a specific need. If there are fewer pollinators, we might want to create artificial pollinators, though not necessarily artificial bees, to help us along the path to addressing the issue. But I think the technology in Black Mirror is very far from something we can do today.

There was a project called RoboBees, that was Harvard-based, that was all about creating artificial bees for pollination—so exactly this scenario.  There were multiple parts and problems: how do you make very small flyers; how do you drive them in a controlled way; and how do they sustain enough energy. All these things are extremely hard to address. They’ve managed to make some of the world’s best miniature flyers that can flap their wings and take off, and are making some great steps in controlling them. But when I say control, I really mean turning left and right in a laboratory setting. If you were to put them outside in a windy environments, it’d be a completely different story, and they don’t really have the energy to go very far.

And then there’s the algorithms. It’s not just the bees in this episode, they’re all connected to hives and they have all these control algorithms implemented that allow them to find flowers and people with image processing. How do you get such large numbers of drones to communicate with each other and their hubs? There are multiple communication issues that are very hard to address. What is interesting is that [Black Mirror] put together these bees with the swarm approach, and the pollinate in a way that’s very bio-inspired.

Kassie: Does anyone think that this episode did a disservice to swarm robotics in that someone was able to hack into the mainframe and essentially attack and kill people? That’s a very real fear that people have with regards to robotics and AI.

Sabine: For years we had to answer the question: Have you read “Prey”? Is this likely to happen? And now it’s: Have you seen “Dark Mirror”?

Ioannis: In fairness, there is some justification for this, as opposed to questions about terminators and things.

Sabine: And it’s not the technology [in Black Mirror] that’s the problem, it’s the humans. The technology starts by being portrayed as a real positive. All the tech in this episode, like the autonomous cars, is actually really cool and helpful. It’s the people who screwed up, ultimately, and the system got hacked. So I think the key message is that we need to make the technology secure.

Ioannis: Did you think it was a little short-sighted in the way it portrayed swarm robotics? It sounds very inefficient to me to have a central control that’s required to monitor the flight of every bee. All the bad guy needed to do was hack the central control to manipulate every bee. A swarm is something different than a million drones. In the episode, it looks like a swarm, but in reality it’s actually a lot of remotely operated robots.

Sabine: That’s right. And if it was properly decentralised, it would have been harder to hack because you wouldn’t be downloading massive amounts of code on every one of these bees.

Ioannis: To make the swarm go from controlled to bad, the hacker could have introduced some kind of memory or code to enable the swarm to evolve rapidly, and from that point on it’s out of control. That would have been interesting. Instead, the hacker just uses the bees as lots of tele-operated robots. I found the episode a little disappointing in this aspect.

Kassie: If you’re doubting robotics in any way, this episode is perhaps something you could look at and think: “Oh my God, this is something that could happen.” But I took some positives from this [with robotics] then only negatives.

Sabine: I felt the autonomous cars were positive; similar to what you’d expect them to be like in 30 years or so.

Ioannis: They portray autonomous cars as being cool, also, which is one aspect. But the fact that the cars are autonomous is nothing [to the story], the characters just use them, which I think is quite cool actually. They ignore the fact that these could be anything futuristic which I think is good.

Kassie: It was almost a precursor to something that could actually happen soon, in that some people were still driving, but the people with money had autonomous systems. And it wasn’t portrayed as scary! So I agree that that was a good aspect.

Sabine: I think the point of Black Mirror is very often not the technology but that people misuse it, and they make a very good point about online bullying [in this episode].

Ioannis: Yes, and they do not portray online bullies in a stereotypical way. For example, there is a teacher character who is a very nice lady in reality, but online is something completely different. Sabine, I’d like to ask you what you think about the potential of a weaponized swarm for defense purposes?

Sabine: I think it’s a very bad idea to weaponize swarms. You have to think about such things as stability and payload, accounting for wind and conditions etc. How would you do that? And why use a swarm as opposed to another type of robot with another type of payload?

Ioannis: I don’t have any specific examples for swarm robotics, but in nature a lion is dangerous, and so is a mosquito. Both in different way. So there could be an application.

Sabine: In that sense, you can weaponize anything. It’s just so much harder to weaponize a swarm than a more capable system, at least today.

Ioannis: What did you think of the robo-bee design?

Sabine: I think it was pretty cool, but too complex. If you were to design a robo-bee you would design something like a mini-copter that would sit on a plant, rather than something that looked like a bee. Or you might have an agriculture robot that simply goes across fields and does the pollination. Although the nice thing about the bee design is that the infrastructure is still already in place—plants etc.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also want to read our other Roundtables:

• Robohub roundtable: Public perceptions of robotics and AI, what’s your pet peeve?
• Robohub roundtable: Why do robotics crowdfunding projects fail?
• Robohub roundtable: Cybathlon and advancements in prosthetics
• Robohub roundtable: Job loss through automation, Foxconn controversy
• Robohub roundtable: Why is it so difficult to define ‘robot’?

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

HBO’s latest offering (on SkyAtlantic here in the UK) is an update of Michael Crichton‘s 1973 film Westworld; this time brought to us as a ten-part television series by sci-fi re-booter extraordinaire J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Jonathan Nolan (yes, brother and frequent collaborator of Christopher). The new Westworld comes with much hope (for HBO as a potential ‘new Game of Thrones’) and hype, understandably with the talent behind it having given us so much terrific science-fiction of late, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Interstellar.

As with Channel 4’s series Humans, broadcast last June (news on forthcoming series 2 here), Dreaming Robot’s offered a live Twitter commentary while the show was being broadcast in the UK, and I’ll take some time afterwards to write some reflective pieces on what we see in the show. (The Twitter ‘Superguide’ from @ShefRobotics can be seen here; my own @DreamingRobots Superguide can be seen here.)

Unsurprisingly, many of the themes in the Westworld reboot could also be seen in Humans. It seems, for example, that both shows express a certain anxiety, that as our machines become more human we humans seem to become less human, or humane. But this isn’t a new idea original to either show – this anxiety as been around as long as robots themselves, from the very invention of the term robot in the 1920s. And if we trace the history of robots in science fiction, we see a history of monsters that reflect this same fear, time and again, in slightly different contexts. Because the robot – which, remember, was invented in the popular imagination long before they were built in labs – is above all else exactly that, a perfect way of expressing this fear.

So, what are we looking at in this new, improved Westworld? (because frankly, the original film lacked the depth of even the first hour of this series, being just a very traditional Frankenstein narrative and rough draft for Crichton’s Jurassic Park, made 20 years later). First – as this nifty graphic on the right illustrates – we do see the robots in Westworld becoming more human. The programme starts with a voice asking the humanoid (very humanoid) robot, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), ‘Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?’ The questioner is exploring whether Dolores has become sentient, that is, aware of her own existence. The echo here with Descartes is clear. We all know about cogito, ergo sum – I think, therefore I am. But Descartes proposition isn’t just about thinking, it is about doubt.  He begins with the proposition that the act of doubting itself means that we cannot doubt, at least, our existence . So we would better understand Descartes’s proposition as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum: I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. If Dolores is found to be questioning the nature of her reality then that would be evidence for self-awareness and being, according to the Cartesian model.

The robots in Westworld are depicted as falling in love, maintaining strong family bonds, appreciating beauty, and consider the world in philosophical, reflective contexts. How much of this is merely programming and how much exceeds the limits imposed upon them by their human masters is the key question that the show teases its audience with, I suspect, though certainly, it occupies much of our attention in the first few hours. But if these moments – described as ‘reveries’ – are in any way genuine moments of creativity, then this is another category, beyond the notion of the cogito, that we might say the robots are becoming ‘alive’.

For many thinkers in the second-half of the twentieth century (for example, the post-Freudian psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott), it is only in such moments of creativity, or enjoying genuine moments of spontaneous being, that we truly discover the self and come alive. (The Freudian and post-Freudian influences on the narrative become even more apparent in subsequent episodes.) As response to late industrial capitalism (and the shock of fascism to the human self-conception as a rational animal), this idea emerged of human beings coming ‘alive’ only when we are not acting compliantly, that is, when we are acting spontaneously, or creatively, and not according to the laws or dictates (or ‘programming’) of another individual, organisation or group consciousness. We see this trend not only in a post-Freudian psychotherapy (e.g. Eric Fromm and the Frankfurt School, R. D. Laing) and other philosophical writings but also in the popular post-war subculture media, including advertising – the sort satirised in the ad for Westworld that opens the original film.

Other perspectives give us a glimpse into the robot’s moments of becoming human. Peter Abernathy, looking at a picture that offers a peek at the world outside, says: “I have a question, a question you’re not supposed to ask.” This is an allusion to Adam and Eve and the fruit of forbidden knowledge when humankind became self-aware of the difference between right and wrong. (Peter, after this, is consumed with rage at how he and his daughter have been treated.) And like Walter, the robot that goes on a psychotic killing spree, pouring milk over his victims, Peter is determined to ‘go off script’ and reclaim for himself a degree of agency and self-determination, acting according to his own, new-found consciousness instead of according to what others have programmed for him.

MEANWHILE, the human beings (‘newcomers’) in Westworld seem less ‘humane’ than their robot counterparts. The newcomers are shown to be sadistic, misogynist, psychopathic in the indulgence of their fantasies. One could argue that this behaviour is morally justifiable in the unreal world designed solely for the benefit of paying customers – that a ‘rape’, for example, in Westworld isn’t really ‘rape’ if it is done to a robot (who, by definition, cannot give nor deny consent), but this clearly is not how the audience is being invited to see these actions.

That human beings are becoming more like machines is an anxiety for which there is a long history of evidence, and even pre-dates the cultural invention of robots in the 1920s. We can see this anxiety in the Romantic unease with the consequences of Enlightenment that gave birth to the new, rational man, and of the industrial revolution, that was turning humans into nothing more than cogs in the steam-powered machines that so transformed the economy. This has been addressed in the Gothic tale of Frankenstein, still the basis for so many narratives involving robots, including the original Westworld film and, more recently, even our most contemporary stories such as Ex_Machina, and, to a lesser extent, in this manifestation of Westworld (which will be subject of a future post). (I have written and spoken on this theme myself many times, for example here and here).

So in Westworld, we meet Dr Ford – the mad scientist who creates the machines that will, inevitably, be freed upon the world. Dr Ford immediately reminds us of another Ford, the man whose name is synonymous with the assembly lines and a mode of production in the late industrial revolution that has done so much to dehumanise modern workforces. We see these methods of production and workers in the iconic film, which was contemporary with Henry Ford’s factories, Metropolis. (Though, as we shall see, this Ford is rather more complex…).

This dehumanisation of human beings in the industrial age has been looked at in robot films since Metropolis #Westworld pic.twitter.com/NkoBH7mlD2

— Dreaming Robots Blog (@DreamingRobots) October 4, 2016

This fear reflects, too, that as post-Enlightenment humans become more rational, they become more like machines, acting in predictable, programmed ways, having lost the spontaneity and creativity of an earlier age. The humans of Westworld are exaggerations of the humans of our ‘Western’ world of rationalism, science and alienation. We don’t have to agree with this Romantic notion, that rationalism and science are negative forces in our world to accept that there is a great deal of anxiety about how rationalism and science are transforming individual human beings and our societies.

Rational dehumanisation is something personified in the actions of the corporation, which has replaced the mad-scientist as the frequent villain of the sci-fi Frankenstein-robot-twist (more to come on this in a future post) and we see hints in Episode 1 of what is to follow in Westworld, along the lines of film’s such as 2013’s The Machine, where the slightly misguided and naive actions of a scientist are only made monstrous when appropriated by a thoroughly evil, inhumane military-industrial complex.

This theme to address so succinctly in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a major influence on the new Westworld, where the Tyrell Corporation boasts that their replicants are More Human Than Human. And in Blade Runner, too, we see humanoid robots behaving more humanely that the people that ruthlessly, rationally hunt down the machines. It is unclear, however, from the Tyrell slogan whether the robots are more human than the human because the technology has become so sophisticated, or because humans have fallen so low.

On Westworld as a whole, it is too early to tell if it will maintain its initial promise and be as monumentally successful as Game of Thrones, or as iconic as Blade Runner. But already this first episode has given us more to think about than the original, and undoubtedly the success and failure of the programme will be instructive.

If you liked this post, you may also want to read:

• Robots can successfully imitate human motions in the operating room
• The dark side of ethical robots
• Law-abiding robots? What should the legal status of robots be?
• Beyond Asimov: how to plan for ethical robots

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Robots have featured in the movies since as early as 1897, with the first celluloid robot turning up in a French movie called Gugusse and the Automaton. Since then, the history of movie robots has been filled with mechanical maids, cruel cyborgs and angry androids.

Most fictional robots are not realistic. Back in February on the Robotiq blog, we investigated how realistic the robots in Star Wars really are. However, even some of the earliest movie robots are still far beyond what our modern technology can produce. Perhaps we’ll never be able to create robots that live up to our fictional ideal. Neill Blomkamp, director of the recent movie, Chappie, thinks not. Recently he said that his research for the movie brought him to the conclusion that humans are incapable of producing an AI as advanced as science-fiction portrays. It might not be such a bad thing if he’s right.

Even though AI might never catch up, some of the other associated robotic technologies have developed quite significantly; enough that we are now able to create some robotic technologies which were first dreamed up for the silver screen.

Lets take an informed eye to four classic movie robots, to separate fanciful robot fiction from realistic robot fact …

1. Power Loader – Aliens (1986)

Exoskeletons are a perfect example where technology is getting pretty close to the movies. The reason is partly that they don’t require much AI – all of the high-level processing is done by the human brain.

This year, the Center for New American Security released a report saying that the US military is aiming to provide soldiers with the TALOS exoskeleton by 2018. There are also other contenders, such as Lockheed Martin’s HULC.

Some have compared the XOS 2 exoskeleton to Tony Stark’s suit in the recent Iron Man movies. However, given the bulk of modern exoskeletons, they’re really more like the Power Loaders from Aliens. Panasonic also claims that they are developing a power loader, which you can see an early design of in this video:

https://youtu.be/nTRUoanbYjU

Whichever movie robot you choose to compare them to, exoskeletons have well and truly arrived.

2. ED-209 – Robocop (1987)

The ED 209 was a giant, machine-gun wielding robot that malfunctions at the start of Robocop, killing a room full of suited executives — possibly the most catastrophic case of Vorführeffekt ever (a German word meaning “demo effect” that refers to the fact that something will always go wrong in a live demo).

Military robots with guns are making their way onto the battlefield whether we like it or not. The HDT Protector might not have legs like the ED 209, but it does have a machine gun. It’s not automated, but new military robots are capable of automated targeting. The physical design imagined for ED 209 was an imposing two-legged affair, and looked worryingly similar to the real-life US mech-suit Megabot 2.

3. KITT – Knight Rider (1982 TV series and 1991 movie)

If the rumors of a new Knight Rider movie coming out in 2016 were true (it seems they’re not, but it’s hard to tell with internet rumors) it would be perfect timing to correspond with the birth of a real life Knight Rider. Next March, Chinese startup Youxia Motors is set to release its KITT inspired electric car. Modeled on the famous robotic automobile, it comes complete with an Android-based operating system called KITT OS.

The Youxia X might not be a complete KITT in itself, but autonomous cars have really come far in the last few years and several of the technologies featured on-screen are now possible. Self driving and collision avoidance are looking to be standard features on many new cars. The so-called “anamorphic-equalizer” — a flashing line of red lights that acted as the cars “eyes” — were infra-red on TV but nowadays they’d probably be LIDAR (though hopefully not so easily hacked as today’s LIDAR). Also, KITT’s engine was a true hybrid, running on various fuels including hydrogen and electric, like a growing number of modern cars.

4. R2D2 – Star Wars Trilogy (1977 to 1983)

Yes, we have covered Star Wars robots already. Despite this, R2D2 really deserves a mention. This droid has earned its place in the robot hall of fame because it’s actually one of the most realistic robots on this list. Largely, this is because the physical design of the robot is pretty basic. However, many of its more advanced, futuristic technologies have actually become possible since they were first dreamed up in the 70s.

R2D2’s impressive list of equipment included a fusion welder, buzz saw and all-terrain treads; all well-proven technologies. In fact, modern technology has surpassed some of the droid’s more futuristic capabilities. Instead of the universal connectivity it got through a plug-in “scomp link”, we’d now probably use bluetooth. These days, its “power recharge coupler” could be upgraded to wireless charging. Its flight capabilities were similar to that of modern autopilots.

But what about the famous holographic projector? This August we all learned how to make holographic projectors out of our smartphones, using the same technique that full sized holographic projectors have been using for a few years.

There is even a real-life R2D2 Builders Club, whose members often meet to show off their hundreds of R2D2 replicas. Most of these replicas probably don’t have the droid’s more advanced features, but it would only take one enterprising robot-builder to turn R2D2 into a reality.

***
As more technologies catch up with fiction, we might continue to see some of the classic movie robots become realistic possibilities. Right now, it looks like AI will always be the limiting factor from making truly realistic replicas, but you never know.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• The real soft robots that inspired Baymax, with Chris Atkeson
• The robots in Ex Machina: VFX Q&A with Andrew Whitehurst
• Why do people love robots? Find out in this Botscar-winning Robot Film Festival short
• From sideshow to main event, drones are making their mark in entertainment

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Which did you choose? Was it the Maschinenmensch – the mechanical doppelganger of Maria, as seen in Fritz Lang’s seminal Metropolis? Or did you opt for Arnold Schwarzenegger as the relentless cyborg assassin from The Terminator? Or how about Robbie, that benevolent Ariel-analogue from Forbidden Planet?

Perhaps you picked one of the replicants from Blade Runner, arguing that, for a filmmaker, a genetically-engineered organism serves the same narrative function as most fictional robots – namely to hold up a mirror to our own humanity. Bishop from Aliens would probably agree with your thesis – after all, he does prefer the term “artificial person”.

As an alternative to all these classic movie icons, I’m inviting you to consider Ava, android star of British indie film The Machine, released this week in the US on DVD/Blu-Ray. Like many of her illustrious android predecessors, Ava is a physical marvel. Intellectually and emotionally she’s no slouch either; indeed, she may very well possess world’s first self-aware artificial intelligence. Make no mistake – Ava is a robot to be reckoned with.

Caity Lotz as Ava in “The Machine”

The Machine begins with computer scientist Vincent McCarthy (Toby Stephens) trying to create a true thinking machine. When a military agenda adds robot weaponisation into the mix, the result is Ava – an acrobatic, intelligent robot with plenty going on beneath her artificial skin.

Development of The Machine’s visual effects began early on, during the production of a three-minute proof-of-concept film by producer/director team John Giwa-Amu and Caradog James of Red and Black Films. Bait Studio created the promo’s VFX, in particular developing a look for the robot’s glowing skin. Once finance was secured, they worked alongside Minimo VFX and Tim Smit to deliver the visual effects for the feature.

“Pulling together such a talented team of VFX guys across Bait (Wales), Minimo (Barcelona) and Tim Smit (Holland) was a key factor in the film’s success,” said Giwa-Amu. “We knew that The Machine might live or die on the quality of the VFX and our three lead providers allowed us to compete with some of the best films on release.”

Christian Lett and Llyr Williams, Visual Effects Supervisors at Bait Studio, described the scope of their work on the film:

“We designed, animated and composited the computer user interface graphics, CG prosthetic enhancements, set extensions and matte paintings, gore and gunfire, skin glows, and all the eye glows. We worked very closely with the director, helping to shape the look he wanted, developing approaches that matched his vision, and giving us a real insight into how our work fitted into the narrative, as well as the look of the movie.”

As well as contributing to the near-future ambience, the film’s many and varied computer displays also communicate key story points.

“Caradog wanted the computer UI to look cool, but functional – and not too slick,” said Lett and Williams. “In particular, he told us not to get UI envy from films like Avengers Assemble or Minority Report. He wanted the system to look like it might have cost a lot of money to develop back in the day, but had since been hacked by many MOD engineers to make it do what they wanted. We researched some real-world military UI design – along with designs from other films and TV shows – to help us find the right balance for The Machine. Bait Studio has an award-winning motion graphics team alongside our VFX artists, so these shots in particular played to many of our strengths.”

Ava glowing skin effect – before and after digital enhancement

The Machine features an array of robot tech, from prosthetic limbs and brain implants to the star of the show, Ava, played by Caity Lotz. All the tech – Ava included – looks human on the outside, but its fleshy exterior conceals a powerful metal chassis that, under certain circumstances, emits light.

“We worked a lot with Nuke on the skin glows,” said Lett and Williams, “using projection mapping techniques to track the movement of the actor’s skin. This meant we could quickly achieve and fine-tune the subsurface ‘metal under skin’ look that Caradog was looking for. The compositing department had the most heavy lifting to do because of the volume of shots. Most of the work was 2D, with small amounts of CG being brought into Nuke’s 3D environment, rather than relying solely on render passes out of Maya.”

Stage photography of Cathy Lotz: Digital skin and eye glow.

In one memorable sequence, created by Minimo VFX, Ava explores her physicality by dancing through a huge underground chamber. Shot in near darkness, the lyrical scene makes striking use of the robot’s glowing substructure. Minimo VFX Directors and Co-Founders Felix Balbas and Maurizio Giglioli explained their approach:

“Minimo VFX worked extensively with the director on the design of the glowing inner skeleton, in order to create not merely a believable effect, but something with a dreamy-evanescent feeling. Our design had to reflect the very intimate journey taken by the character in the sequence. The footage was already very elegant, so it was a matter of preserving it, adding a touch of “magic”. Because it was shot in darkness and silhouette, the dance sequence was a very difficult body-tracking challenge, for which Minimo turned to Peanut VFX for support.

Digital skin and eye glows

“We went through several iterations of shading and comping tests, trying to successfully incorporate all the ingredients: internal layers of self-shading, sub-surface scattering and normal ambient effect – all quite challenging for objects that are inside a body, and almost completely in silhouette. After many tests, we realised that the sharper the contrast was, the better it worked. This way we maintained the original feeling of the photography, and kept the layers as subtle as possible.”

In the film’s dramatic opening sequence, McCarthy interviews a wounded soldier, Paul Dawson (John Paul MacLeod), whose catastrophic injury has cratered a large section of his head. The soldier’s startling appearance was the result of Bait Studio’s digital work, combined with prosthetics by Paul Hyett.

“The actor wore prosthetic make-up for the edges of the wound, with a green section that was removed and replaced with a CG prosthetic,” said Lett and Williams. “We used Autodesk 123D Catch to create the CG wound from the silicone prosthetic, then cleaned it up and rendered it in Maya. The actor’s head was tracked using SynthEyes, and the final composite was done using Nuke. The most challenging part of this shot was rebuilding Toby Stephens’s hair as it passed in front of the yellow tracking markers.

“The opening sequence has 55 VFX shots, ranging from glowing eyes, tabletop computers (later covered in blood) and gore to robotic tentacles lifting a girl into the air. We were really pleased and proud to have our biggest sequence at the very start of the film, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. This scene establishes the film visually as a cut above most low budget science fiction films, and helps sell the world that you’re in. Being able to help with both these things was very rewarding.”

Watch the video for breakdowns of Bait’s visual effects from The Machine:

In all, Bait Studio delivered 250 shots for The Machine over a period of about four months from concept to delivery. Reflecting on the company’s first feature experience, Lett and Williams concluded:

“We’re constantly learning on projects and applying that knowledge to the next, so we can streamline our workflow and develop as a studio. It also showed us how beneficial it is to have a design capability within the studio, so we can offer creative as well as technical solutions to filmmakers. The Machine was a great opportunity to showcase our work and also to show that we have the resources and talent here in Wales to tackle this type of project.”

• The Machine official website
• Bait Studio
• Minimo VFX
• Peanut FX

Images copyright © 2014 Red and Black Films & Bait Studio.

Callan McAuliffe in Robot Overlords

In the low-budget British sci-fi adventure, Robot Overlords, alien automatons rule the streets and ordinary citizens are locked under curfew in their homes. Just by stepping outside, you risk being vaporised by a hulking Sentry, or picked off by a lethal Sniper.

Amid the ruins of civilisation, Sean Flynn (Callan McAuliffe) leads his group of young friends on a quest to join the resistance forces that are standing against the robot invaders. Hot on their heels, however is their old teacher – now treacherous robot collaborator – Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley) and his captive Kate (Gillian Anderson). Who will prevail? Man or machine?

Directed by Jon Wright, Robot Overlords features some 265 visual effects shots delivered by Soho-based Nvizible, supervised by the company’s founder and co-owner, Paddy Eason. The film’s complex tracking requirements were fulfilled by Peanut FX, with additional compositing support being provided by Boundary VFX, under the supervision of Nick Lambert.

Watch a wide selection of Nvizible’s VFX shots in the official video for Robots Never Lie, written by Matt Zo for the Robot Overlords end credits

Origins of the Overlords

The original story concept for Robot Overlords came to director and co-writer, Jon Wright, in a dream. “I dreamed that I was playing cowboys and Indians with a little boy,” Wright recalled. “A huge two-storey robot came marching up the street and swung its laser cannon arm towards him, and a voice boomed out, ‘Citizen, drop your weapon immediately!’ I assumed I was just recycling a movie that I’d already seen, but eventually, I came to the conclusion that maybe it was an original idea.”

After expanding the dream concept into a two-page treatment, Wright began developing a script with co-writer Mark Stay. “Jon and I are both big fans of those 1980s Amblin movies like E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and The Goonies,” said Stay. “But those films were always set in American suburbia – we wondered why nobody had ever set a film like that in the UK.”

“It came together very quickly, especially for a British film,” Stay continued. “Our elevator pitch was, ‘It’s like The Goonies, but with robots blowing stuff up!’ We took Jon’s treatment to Piers Tempest – one of the producers from Jon’s previous film, Grabbers. The BFI put us under their wing, and before we knew it we had some development money.”

VFX supervisor Paddy Eason was also consulted at this early stage. “I knew Jon because we did the effects for his first two films – Tormented, and an Irish monster movie called Grabbers.” Eason commented. “The first thing I received was the treatment, and the next throw of the dice for me was getting invited to be part of a group that critiqued the script – Jon calls it the ‘Tiny Think Tank’.”

The Tiny Think Tank

The Tiny Think Tank is an initiative conceived by Wright as a means by which a group of filmmakers can gather together periodically, in order to review scripts in development. “It’s a gang of writers, actors, directors, visual effects people,” Wright explained. “There aren’t any producers or financiers involved – it’s purely creatives. We come together, read a script completely cold, then have a round-table discussion. It was inspired by Pixar. They have their team of creatives – who are also shareholders – who come together and critique each other’s films. The Tiny Think Tank is our low-budget UK version of that, and I think it’s one of the reasons Robot Overlords got made. Our script accelerated in terms of quality much more quickly than it would have done had we been writing it in isolation.”

Nvizible’s VFX breakdown for a key sequence in “Robot Overlords”

As part of the Tiny Think Tank, Paddy Eason was able to offer a level of opinion and criticism not commonly afforded people in the visual effects profession. “I had some suggestions from my own visual effects point of view,” Eason remarked. “But I also put some story ideas out to Jon and Mark. As a visual effects person, that’s not normally part of your remit. In fact, on many shows, to put forward story ideas would be viewed as a breach of etiquette. So it was delightful to be invited to give that kind of feedback.”

Nvizible’s association with Robot Overlords developed further when the company became a production partner on the project. Nevertheless, they were still required to bid for the work. “Robot Overlords was a regular production with a bond company and other financiers, so it had to be seen not only that our bid was value for money, but also that our costs weren’t unrealistically low,” Eason pointed out. “Also that, if the unthinkable happened and we dropped the ball, there would be somewhere else to go to get the work done. Obviously it didn’t come to that!”

How to Design a Robot

Key to the success of Robot Overlords was the convincing creation of the alien machines that have descended from outer space to occupy planet Earth. Design concepts for the mechanical marauders developed naturally alongside the story.

“The Robot Empire is stretched across the galaxy,” explained Stay. “If you compare it to the Roman Empire, the Earth is like Caledonia – it’s the last place any of them want to be. Resources are stretched thin. So the Sentries, for example, are quite sorry figures. They walk with a kind of stoop, and they’ve got chips and dents and dinks in their armour, because they’ve been here for three years and survived a war.”

According to the storyline, the Robot Empire studies the inhabitants of each planet they plan to subjugate, and designs an automated invasion force specifically to tap into the psychological profiles of that planet’s inhabitants. This bespoke engineering approach is evident in the design of the Sentries: two-storey, bipedal robots with small heads and enormous, hulking arms.

According to co-writer Mark Stay, the robot Sentries are designed to tap into our instinctive fear of “people with tiny brains and big muscles”.

“In studying us, the robots have discovered that we’re frightened of people with tiny brains and big muscles,” explained Stay. “That informed the design of the Sentry. Our other robots – like the Snipers and Air Drones – are very functional, each with a specific purpose. ”

A different psychological insight led to the design of the Mediator – a kind of robot diplomat that acts as an interface between human beings and their automated oppressors. “The Mediator is made to resemble a child, because they’ve observed that, on the whole, adults don’t behave aggressively towards children,” Jon Wright remarked. “But it’s been designed by an alien species who aren’t familiar with the minutiae of how we react, how our culture is organised. So they’ve got it a bit wrong. They’ve attempted to make something likeable, but they’ve actually made something that’s extremely creepy.”

Early conceptual designs for the robots were developed by storyboard and concept artist, Gabriel Schucan. “Jon and I sat with Gabriel,” Stay recalled. “We scribbled ideas, and he would develop them and send drawings back to me and Jon. That was still very early on in the writing of the script.”

“Robot Compendium” concept document – Sentry illustration by Jack Dudman

Also at this early stage, the team created the “Robot Compendium”, a manual containing a piece of key art for each robot, drawn by Jack Dudman, along with a description of the machine’s capabilities. “The Robot Compendium, helped us to sell in the script to investors,” remarked Stay. “So it was a really important document for us.”

During the story development process, visual effects constraints influenced what might be achievable, both practically and financially. “While we were still talking about the script, we started doing visual effects breakdowns in a very loose, back-of-an-envelope way,” said Eason. “Some scenes would turn out to be looking very expensive, and that was fed back into the writing process. For example, there was a scene in the woods with our heroes being chased by robots called Octobots. That was quite heavy-duty in terms of visual effects, and wasn’t particularly important in the story. So it was elbowed fairly early on.”

“Robot Overlords” concept art by Paul Catling.

The Overlords Become Real

Once Robot Overlords was greenlit, the initial robot concepts were handed over to designer and illustrator Paul Catling, known for his work on films including Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: The First Avenger and the Harry Potter series.

“Paul is incredibly productive,” Eason remarked. “He did lots and lots of pen-and-ink designs, just exploring how the robots might look. Early on, some of them were much more organic-looking, and skeletal, and frightening in a slightly Satanic kind of way. Ultimately, we decided the robots should be slightly crude-looking. We wanted to avoid comparisons with Transformers – Jon wanted our robots to look much more industrial. We also wanted them to be slightly reminiscent of WWII Nazi technology.

Paul Catling’s concept designs for the Sentry.

Although the design of the Sentry was inspired directly by Wright’s inspirational dream, it nevertheless went through a lengthy development process. “One of the original tests we did for the Sentry was a lot more like Robby the Robot,” Wright revealed. “Then he developed into more of an Iron Giant character – we just pushed that design to make it slightly more peculiar. He’s slightly lop-sided, and made up of different geometric shapes. That was partly driven by the plot device of having them fold up into cubes, which was our way of showing that they’ve been deactivated.”

The Mediator robot was played by Craig Garner, whose appearance was enhanced in post-production to give the actor’s skin an unsettling plastic sheen. For some scenes, frames were removed to create staccato movements.

The Mediator, in contrast, was conceived from the beginning as a machine that looked like a human – but not too much like a human. “Right from the beginning, we wanted deliberately to put the Mediator in the uncanny valley, rather than try to avoid it,” Wright noted. “We gave the actor, Craig Garner, perfect false teeth, trimmed his hairline to a perfectly straight line, gelled his hair rock-solid, and tried to remove all of his imperfections and blemishes with make-up. Then that was enhanced in post-production with clean-up, skin glows, making his eyes uniform. Sometimes we’d take out every other frame to give him a kind of clockwork, staccato movement.”

“The bulk of the Mediator work was done in the grade by the colourist, Gareth Spensley, on his Baselight,” Eason elaborated. “However, the software we use at Nvizible for skin work is a suite of NUKE tools that we use as part of our ‘Nhance’ service. These allow us to selectively filter out features of a certain size – for example, wrinkles or spots – while retaining everything else, like image grain, shadows and regular skin texture.”

Robots at Nvizible

With the exception of the Mediator, Nvizible further developed the robot designs in their CG workspace. This process was facilitated by initial 3D work done by Paul Catling. “As Paul progresses his designs, he starts working in 3D,” explained Eason. “He’ll do a render, then go on top of it in Photoshop and paint lighting effects and so on to turn it into an illustration. But the underlying geometry is there. He even rigs it a little so he can move the arms and legs around to come up with certain key poses. So he ended up with some pretty well-realised CG models, which he then gave to us. We had to rebuild them, but they gave us a head-start.”

Early 3D concept for “Robot Overlords”

Nvizible’s robot models were built, rigged and animated primarily using Maya, with additional sculpting work done using ZBrush. “The Sentry ended up being a very complicated rig, with hundreds of moving parts,” Eason noted. “But it does play the biggest part in the film.”

Texturing was applied in MARI, using photographic reference chosen to support the story point that the robots have been operating in a hostile environment for many years, and are therefore both weathered and battle-worn. “There was no decoration on the robots – no painted symbols or information; it was all slabby, raw, metal, moving parts,” Eason noted. “We took photographs of similar unadorned, mechanical things, like old steam engines, big industrial lifts, big heavy things made out of cast iron. Part of the fun was making them nice and weathered – chipped and broken – which also helped to give them scale.”

Ncam and the Air Drone

Many key scenes featuring the robots were shot using a real-time camera-tracking system provided by Nvizible’s sister company, Ncam. The Ncam system allows a camera operator to view pre-visualised CG assets through the viewfinder, adjusted to conform to the parameters of the lens and superimposed in the correct position over the live-action.

“Ncam works without any tracking markers. It lets you see a previs version of your visual effects assets through the camera, or at video village,” Eason explained. “Ncam combines the live video feed from the camera with a render from a workstation, all in real-time, showing your VFX asset in situ. It could be anything from a set extension to a creature.”

Ncam was used during the film’s opening sequence, in which a crazed man runs down a suburban street shouting defiance at his robot oppressors. An Air Drone flies down, warning the man to return to his home; when the man ignores the robot, it vaporises him.

“My view with visual effects is to say, ‘Go ahead and do everything practically that you can, and we’ll deal with it in post.’ Rain? No problem!” – Paddy Eason, Nvizible.

The sequence was shot on location in Bangor, on the outskirts of Belfast, Northern Ireland, using primarily hand-held cameras. Following Wright and Schucan’s storyboards, Nvizible created previs for the sequence, using survey data of the location gathered by members of their Belfast office.

During the night shoot, interactive lighting was coordinated by Fraser Taggart, director of photography, to simulate the glow from the Air Drone’s blue hover-jets, while practical rain simulated a torrential downpour. “Rain gives you a huge amount of visual texture, so it’s a lovely thing to have,” observed Eason. “Generally speaking, my view with visual effects is to say, ‘Go ahead and do everything practically that you can, and we’ll deal with it in post.’ Hand-held cameras? No problem! Rain? No problem! We’ll add CG rain, and we’ll make sure it’s composited behind your rain. But there were a couple of shots where the camera was looking up into the sky, where it would have been too much of a nightmare to have rain falling into the lens, so I did ask them to shoot dry versions to give us the option.”

Practical pyrotechnics were used for the moment when the man is blown up by the robot, somewhat in the manner of a human firework. “We shot the plate with the actor, a clean plate with no actor, and a third plate with the pyro going off,” Eason revealed. “We used a similar camera move each time, but there was no motion control – which is fine as long as everyone’s on the same page. The practical pyro gave us real interactive lighting, and a good clue of how the rain is lit up. We enhanced it with additionally-shot bluescreen pyro elements afterwards.”

For the shots featuring the Air Drone, Ncam was used extensively to aid the shooting of the live-action plates. “It was exciting to see the reaction of the camera operator,” Eason recalled. “Like a lot of people, he was a bit sceptical about Ncam – sometimes people view it as a bit of an encumbrance. But when he realised he was actually able to see the hovering Drone through his viewfinder, and walk around it and choose angles, he was really excited and impressed.”

In one close-up shot, the camera executes a 180° move around the muzzle of the Air Drone’s gun, with the camera racking focus on the barrel. “I don’t think you’d have shot that plate without Ncam,” Eason asserted.

While the live-action plates were used for most scenes featuring the flying robot, Nvizible created some backgrounds using 360° HDRI panoramas shot on location by VFX assistant Erran Lake, using a DSLR camera. “Sometimes the plate done with the movie camera might be nice, but technically very difficult,” Eason explained. “So we would create our own version of that using my stitched stills, and put the rain in ourselves.”

Ncam was used for a scene in which a giant robot Sentry pursues Connor (Milo Parker) down a suburban street.

As director, Jon Wright appreciated the freedom afforded by Ncam, notably during a sequence in which a gigantic Sentry chases a boy down a suburban street. “You’re able to shoot something as if it was actually there, so it unlocks your shooting style,” he commented. “We were able to imbue those shots with a hand-held quality, and be quite cavalier about the way we shot. Normally when you shoot a visual effect like that, and there’s nothing there, you’re worried about not framing it up properly.”

“It was quite difficult to set up, positioning the robot and getting good tracks on the camera,” Wright continued, “but it meant we were able to do a running hand-held shot backwards with the boy, framing up the robot above him. The Sentries are massive, so they tend to go out of frame. If there’s nothing there, it makes the operator nervous and they tend to err on the side of caution and give you a slightly peculiar, lop-sided frame. If they can see the thing, they frame it much more naturally, and you get a much more interesting shot.”

NCam workflow – final composite (before grading)

“I imagine in years to come this will be fairly standard practice,” Wright concluded. “The days of tennis balls on sticks are numbered.”

Watch a video of the live NCam feed as seen by the camera operator:

By the time post-production began, Robot Overlords already existed in rough-cut form, since editor Matt Platts-Mills had been present on location throughout production, cutting each day’s rushes together into a rough assembly. “It was very helpful to have Matt with us, cutting as we went,” Eason observed. “By the time the shoot was done, we were in a good position to hit the ground running on certain key visual effects scenes.”

Since much of the film had been shot hand-held using anamorphic lenses, one of the first challenges for the visual effects team was tracking. Peanut FX handled all the film’s tracking requirements, delivering 3D layouts for roughly 115 shots, mostly with 3D camera and/or object tracks for set extensions and robot integration.

“We mainly used 3DEqualizer,” commented Amelie Guyot, matchmove supervisor at Peanut. “We find it great for solving anamorphic camera tracks when lens distortion grids and camera info are available. We were provided with a lidar scan model for scenes involving a castle, which we used to perfectly match the plates – 3D scans are always very helpful, especially with anamorphic shots. We also used Autodesk’s Matchmover to calibrate sets; it’s still one of our favourite tools for image-based 3D reconstruction.”

“Tracking was a concern early on,” Eason admitted, “but the guys at Peanut absolutely rocked it and did a brilliant job.”

Tracking for “Robot Overlords” was handled by Peanut FX, who worked meticulously to deal with director Wright’s extensive use of hand-held cameras, and some challenging sequences in which the robots interact directly with humans and their technology.

During post-production, Jon Wright made himself available to the Nvizible team on a regular basis. “I made a point of remaining on the film throughout the time that Nvizible were working on the visual effects, so I could go in and out of their offices at my leisure,” the director stated. “It saves a lot of work if you’re seeing updated shots regularly – you tend to have less waste. I don’t know how to run Nuke or anything, but I think I’m quite geeky, and have a good understanding of how effects work. I can tell if something’s going to be quick to do, or time-consuming. I think maybe some directors don’t have that.”

With regard to the animation of the robots, Wright paid particular attention to the way the movement of the metal invaders expressed their character – or rather, their lack of it. “There’s a tendency to anthropomorphise robots,” Wright observed. “Our robots are quite implacable, so it was important to strip out emotion.”

Even given this direction, nevertheless Wright found that individual animators inevitably had their own take on how the robots should move. “After a bit I could guess quite accurately who’d animated what, because they bring their own personality to it,” he commented. “It got to a point where I would say, ‘I know this shot would be great for this animator,’ on the basis of what they’d done before.”

Lighting the CG robots brought its own set of challenges, due to the difficulty of making metallic objects look both highly reflective and convincingly three-dimensional. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword,” Eason remarked. “If you’ve got good HDRIs for everything, you get good reflections, but because most of what you see with metal is based on reflections, it’s hard to make stuff that’s physically juicy, with a nice keylight and a nice fill light. You’re always fighting that chrome robot thing, where it all looks a bit floaty and unlit.”

Skyship concept art by Paul Catling.

Riding the Skyship

One of the most difficult visual effects sequences occurs at the film’s climax, when Sean finds himself riding through the skies on the front of the enormous robot Skyship.

“They were really hard shots, because they were extremely ambitious,” Wright admitted. “I’d imagine that even the likes of ILM working for J.J. Abrams would have found those shots tough to get right.”

Once again, NCam was used to combine a previs version of the Skyship with the live-action as it was being shot on a small studio set. “The set had a slight bounce, which made things interesting,” Eason recalled. “We ended up replacing all the practical set with CG, although it was useful to have it there for reference, shadow catching and so on.”

The film’s ambitious climactic scenes, during which Sean (Callan McAuliffe) rides on the exterior of the massive Skyship, proved particularly challenging.

In post-production, the low-resolution Skyship model was replaced by its high-resolution counterpart. “The main challenges with the Skyship came in look-dev, working out how to make a big shiny collection of metal blocks look big and scary and cool,” Eason commented. “In reality, large steel things tend to look like concrete, so we had to cheat the physics of the renders quite a bit. We had a lot of fun with the Skyship engines – big jets of dirty orange and blue fire. Our FX lead, Wayde Duncan Smith, did a great job of simulating all that stuff in Houdini.”

Because the sequence featured multiple camera angles, with moves that were very specific to the animation of the various characters and craft, it was deemed unfeasible to shoot live-action background plates. Instead, generic aerial plates of landscapes were shot using an array of DSLR cameras.

“We flew the route in a chopper several times, shooting 160° panoramas using three Canon 5Ds, shooting stills at 3fps,” Eason revealed. “We fed these image sequences through a pipeline of undistortion, stitching, stabilising, optical flow and re-projection, to make beautiful background plates of moving land for all the flying Skyship shots. It was hard work, but our Nuke artist, Antoine Jannic, absolutely nailed it.”

Watch a video of a completed shot from the Skyship sequence:

Enter the Spitfire

Also featured during the film’s finale is that most British of icons – a Supermarine Spitfire. The old-school technology of the WWII fighter plane proves pivotal in the battle against the robots, whose jamming devices have grounded more sophisticated jet aircraft.

The production shot live-action of the historic plane on the ground using a mock-up provided by Gateguards UK. An authentic Spitfire was also made available for one day of the shoot by The Aircraft Restoration Company, Duxford. In addition, Nvizible built a CG Spitfire which they used for additional aerial shots.

Jon Wright (right) directs the action around the museum-piece Supermarine Spitfire, on location in the Isle of Man.

“We used the mock-up Spitfire in a remote, disused quarry location on the Isle of Man,” explained Eason. “Then we also had the real Spitfire fly out to us for the day. We positioned it on the airfield and dressed it similar to how the mock-up had been in the quarry. It was a huge privilege to have a real museum-piece there, and a dream for us in terms of creating our CG Spitfire for the flying shots, because we were able to get perfect reference, taking thousands of photographs, right down to every rivet.”

Eason was doubly delighted when he found himself booked in for a flight in a two-seat Spitfire. “The producer, Piers Tempest, knew I was a big fan of Spitfires, and he made a casual comment: ‘We’ll get you a flight in it.’ I didn’t believe it would ever happen, but a couple of months later it was arranged for me to go to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. I got to fly around, and control the Spitfire, and everything. Ostensibly it was to record audio inside the plane – I was wired for sound – but also it was just a marvellous day out.”

Robot Reflections

Looking back at his experience of working on Robot Overlords, Mark Stay noted the benefits brought by the collaborative process: “I’ve been involved in the whole procedure in a way that many other writers aren’t usually. I was writing the novelisation at the same time, so I would email Paddy to ask questions like, ‘What colour are the engines?’ He would invite me over to Nvizible so I could sit in on VFX test screenings, and I would be there furiously scribbling all this stuff down for the novel. I’ve been really blessed with the access that I’ve had.”

“It was a delightful experience, because of our creative involvement from beginning to end,” Paddy Eason added. “I love the fact that it’s quite an unusual British film – very charming and quirky, starting at a very small personal scale and ending up quite epic and extraordinary.”

The film’s ambition is something that Jon Wright is proud of. However, he remains sanguine about the challenges involved in bringing such a film to the screen.

“It’s a bit of a shame that we aren’t really making these kinds of movies in Britain and Ireland, and that British cinemagoers almost prefer to go and see American films over British films. And we’ve got all our best filmmakers going across the water to do remakes,” Wright commented. “But the truth is, when you make a movie like this, you go up against massive Hollywood blockbusters, and it’s difficult to deliver in the way that they deliver. So we tried to focus on character, and give the film a different tone to a typical Hollywood movie at the moment – not dark and moody, but kind of light-hearted and optimistic. Our kids swear a lot and are playful, rather than being the earnest, soul-searching types you get in typical American YA movies.”

Echoing Wright’s thoughts, Eason recalled, “I remember one meeting we had early on, where we pitched the project to quite a well-known film producer. This producer said, ‘If you pull it off, I’ll eat my hat.’ So now we’re going to get a nice hat-shaped cake made for him!”

Having enjoyed limited theatrical release across the UK through Signature, Robot Overlords may also be gaining momentum as a TV series. “We have strong interest from two big broadcasters, in the US and the UK,” Wright revealed. “In 2015, television is probably the way to go with this sort of project. We could really explore into the human politics of the situation – life under enemy occupation. Obviously, the occupation is going on across the entire planet, so there’s a million different directions you could expand the story into. And ten hours of television is probably more exciting than another 90-minute film. It could be very good – watch this space.”

Robot Overlords is now available on DVD. 

• Robot Overlords on Facebook
• Nvizible
• Peanut FX
• Boundary VFX
• Jon Wright at IMDb
• Paddy Eason at IMDb
• Mark Stay – Unusually Tall Stories
• Amelie Guyot at IMDb
• The Foundry – NUKE, MARI
• Autodesk – Maya, Mudbox, Matchmover
• Pixologic – ZBrush
• Side Effects – Houdini

Special thanks to Marek Steven, Alex Coxon, Piers Tempest and Phil Guest. “Robot Overlords” photographs and video copyright © 2015 and courtesy of Tempo Productions and Nvizible.

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