The Winter/Spring 2010 semester is in full swing. In fact, we are almost a quarter of the way through the semester. Hard to believe. Already, the Public Design Workshop is off to a smashing start for the new year.

In our Project Studio this semester we are developing the growBots project: exploring the possible uses of sensing and robotics in the context of local small-scale agriculture. This is an extension of our work last semester on Speculative Robotics, with a particular focus on agriculture and the addition of participatory and public design methods.

Given the excitement of our group on this topic, its likely this will be a major focus of the Public Design Workshop for the next 12 to 18 months.

You can follow growBots as it progresses at http://www.growbotgarden.com/. At this point we are still in the early stages of research. As the project progresses you can expect the blog content will shift from literature and project reviews to discussions of our own program development.

In addition to growBots we have a spate of other projects, including: continuing research and writing on participatory urban sensing (we hope to have a publication completed for submission by May); organizing a track at the European Association of Science and Technology 2010 conference on Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience, produced in collaboration with Alex Wilkie and Tobie Kerridge from Goldsmiths and the Material Beliefs project; a panel at CHI 2010 on “HCI, Communities and Politics”; and 3 of workshop members will be graduating this Spring.

Its going to be busy…