Mingling With Robots

In the near future, robots will be designed to fulfil jobs people do not want to do or that humans are incapable of doing. But which qualities do they need to naturally mingle with us? With this in mind, industrial design students at TU Delft investigated the interaction between a people and robots by looking at how robots can engender different characters in their behaviour and appearance.

Robotics, as a field of mechatronics, focuses on the integration of mechanics, electronics and computation. Robots engender a new interaction paradigm: people interact with things that are intelligent and autonomous and that dwell in the same spaces as us. However, many of the peculiarities in terms of how we can interact with them are still to be explored. This is specifically so, when we expand the concept of robots from humanoid-like entities to include everyday objects that demonstrate intelligent behaviour. A design assignment in the course Integrated Technology Design enabled us to gain some insights about these new types of interaction.