Researchers at the University of Waikato deliberately built a robot called Spike using traits that previous research associated with creepiness: an appearance that is hard to classify as human, animal or machine, plus spikes, unusual facial features, dark colors and unpredictable motion.
They showed Spike to 104 participants. Some described it as angry or unsettling, while others thought it was cool or even cute. The team concluded that there may be no universally creepy robot because perceptions vary strongly between people.
They deliberately combined features meant to make a robot creepy, and some people still called it cute. Apparently even engineered creepiness has a target-audience problem.
HAHA (Hypertrophic Ambidextrous Hand and Arm) is a performance work that adds an extra robotic arm to the human body with hyperextension, ambidextrous motion and continuous rotation. Developed by Stelarc with Sorbonne University's ISIR, it turns the simple idea of “one more arm” into a full body-machine choreography.
The performer is physically connected to the system through a magnetic lock and controls the installation using an exoskeleton plus ECG and EMG sensors. The robot's motion also drives live video switching and sound generation.
The bonus arm isn't merely extra; it gets movement abilities the original human arms never had. The upgrade has overtaken the base model.
At Brisbane Festival, a 130 cm humanoid named QUTie will lead visitors through wellness exercises. The Unitree G1-based robot is used by QUT's Centre for Robotics for human-robot interaction research.
It has been trained on the movement routine using motion capture, can walk, run, dance and roll, and is scheduled to guide public exercise sessions on September 22 and 23. The fitness instructor of the future may be the one participant whose movements are literally programmed.
When the wellness coach is a robot, the person saying “move your body naturally” is also the most programmed one there. Oddly persuasive.
Making a robot feel alive is not only about faces or voices; whole-body motion can matter too. MOFU (MOrphing Fluffy Unit) explores that idea with a fluffy spherical body that expands and contracts. Developed by researchers at the University of Electro-Communications, it uses a Jitterbug geometric structure and a single linear actuator to change its height from roughly 210 mm to 280 mm.
In user studies, adding whole-body expansion, contraction and rotation made the robot seem more animate than locomotion alone. Rather than relying on a face, MOFU uses the rhythm of its entire body to suggest life.
Before giving the robot a face, they basically said “let's make the whole body breathe.” The fluffiness makes that strangely convincing.
They deliberately combined features meant to make a robot creepy, and some people still called it cute. Apparently even engineered creepiness has a target-audience problem.