This week has been all about robots and beautiful prototypes as we hosted the second ever Being There: Robots in Public Spaces workshop, held the Objects Sandbox Work in Progress Show, and played about with the brilliant Nth Camera.

On Tuesday, we hosted the second ever Being There workshop in the Studio, where a group of brilliant creative practitioners, technologists and academics came together to explore how robots can enable people to participate in public spaces, as a place to meet and share ideas. They have been working with small NAO robots, prototyping ideas and exploring how it feels to interact with them. In the afternoon, three groups formed, all looking to explore different aspects of human/robot interaction. The three different groups were exploring questions like ‘can a robot shock or offend?’ and ‘What movements and gestures make a robot seem more responsive?’ Some of the outcomes of these explorations will be written about in a blog about the day, so keep your eye on our news section.

As if the excitement of having mini humanoid robots in the Studio wasn’t enough, Wednesday brought us the Objects Sandbox Work in Progress Show. Sadly, in the daytime, we held the last Objects Sandbox workshop, but we were all cheered up when the Studio was transformed into a brilliant exhibition of the Objects Sandbox projects and their prototypes. Keep an eye on the Objects Sandbox website, as the project participants will no doubt be posting blogs about the evening in no time. Have a look at Studio Producer, Verity's Flickr folder of the event.

The Nth Camera team held a briefing event with the journalists from Watershed based RIFE magazine, who are creating a new online youth platform for Bristol. The journalists, Ryan, Shanai, Adiba and John, are thinking of using Nth Camera to film part of the launch of the magazine this summer. Nth Camera also gave today’s lunchtime talk, where they went into detail about the app, how to use it, what’s coming next, and some of the research they are conducting around the concept of democratic multi-camera filming. 

Sheffield Doc Fest starts today, and the DCRC’s Mandy and Jess, along with Nth Camera and ANAGRAM’s Door Into the Dark are all making their way to the international documentary festival, to present/demo/install their work. More information will be posted on the DCRC blog soon.

Fatbrain, an app that helps you to sell books, which Calvium recently developed with colour&thing, has just made it into the iTunes top ten for free apps in the book category. The app lets you scan the barcode on any book, and offers a price straight away.