Designing Affection: On the Curious Case of Machine Cuteness

Proceedings of the Workshop on Exploring Creative Content in Social Robotics, 2020

Social robots are becoming more important in everyday life due to the need of the health providers to cope with an ageing population and a general crisis in the health sector. Additionally, with increased computational power, social robots will be able to act as social companions in settings outside of health. In this work, we look at the methodology of design for new types of companions robots, in the context of a domestic setting. In domestic settings, personalisation is vital to successful products, but most human-robot interaction (HRI) research focuses on adaptive behaviour for social interactions using available commercial devices. These robots represent finished products, with very little room left for meaningful physical alterations. The goal of this work is a first investigation into meaningful aesthetic changes of a new social robot with a wide range of choices for personal customisation. CCS CONCEPTS • General and reference → Design; • Human-centered computing → Systems and tools for interaction design; • Computer systems organization → Robotic components.

Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy of Culture, 2018

This article considers the appeal of the cute body and its ambiguous relationship with the lovable. While cuteness is an aesthetic that is subjectively determined and expressed, it can also embellish a body with features that are standardized by systems of commodification. The cute body possesses a diminutive and vulnerable charm, but it is also an object that is augmented to solicit the subject's love and control. Hence, the aesthetic of cuteness may seem to disempower the object, but it is likewise, an acute seduction that bears witness to the craft or technē that captures the subject. Developing a framework for cuteness as a stylistic device or technology embedded in the subject-object relationship, the article argues that the qualities and experience of the lovable constitute a condition of the affected subject, who must bear the paradox of embracing and effacing the object's difference.

Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture, 2017

Social well-being, referring to a subjectively perceived long-term state of happiness, life satisfaction, health, and other prosperity afforded by social interactions, is increasingly being employed to rate the success of human social systems. Although short-term changes in well-being can be difficult to measure directly, two important determinants can be assessed: perceived enjoyment and affection from relationships. The current article chronicles our work over several years toward achieving enjoyable and affectionate interactions with robots, with the aim of contributing to the perception of social well-being in interacting persons. Emphasis has been placed on both describing in detail the theoretical basis underlying our work, and relating the story of each of several designs from idea to evaluation in a visual fashion. For the latter, we trace the course of designing four different robotic artifacts intended to further our understanding of how to provide enjoyment, elicit affection, and realize one specific scenario for affectionate play. As a result, by describing (a) how perceived enjoyment and affection contribute to social well-being, and (b) how a small humanoid robot can proactively engage in enjoyable and affectionate play—recognizing people’s behavior and leveraging this knowledge—the current article informs the design of companion robots intended to facilitate a perception of social well-being in interacting persons during affectionate play.

Journal of Future Robot Life, 2022

Robots are today made not only to assist us in menial tasks and routine labour but also provide companionship and love. This has generated much academic and public interest, and people have asked whether robots can love, whether human-robot relationships are possible, and whether humans can develop loving affection for robots. These are all important questions, but I approach the issues from another perspective: can robots made for love change our very understanding of love? By treating love as a cultural and malleable phenomenon, I explore the possibility of it being changed a) to accommodate robots, and b) as a consequence of how robots love us. The first regards the quest to understand what love is and our current tendency to understand phenomena in light of the computer or computational metaphor of human beings. The second involves an examination of how robots are produced to love, and what this form of love might lead to in the wild. Rather than asking if robots can live up to human ideals, I ask if humans will live down-or it might be up-to robot ideals. Using Abraham Maslow's distinction between being love and deficiency love as an example, I argue that love robots might take us to a place where deficiency love and a growing expectancy of one-sided worship changes the content of love as a cultural phenomenon.

This article explores the ways in which robots' behaviours are designed and curated to elicit reactions from their human counterparts. Through the work of artists such as Nam June Paik, Steve Daniels, Edward Ihnatowicz and Norman White, a survey of robotic art illustrates a particular aesthetic and behavioural language that is non-threatening, animalistic, cute, quaint and whimsical. Considering the artists' programming of behaviours and construction of aesthetics, the use of animal behavioural modelling, and developments in social robotics, this article unpacks how meaning is inscribed onto robots and in return how affect is transmitted to human viewers. By exploring the whimsical bodies, performative machines and networked nonhumans brought forth in robotic artworks, this article draws out how aesthetic and behavioural languages of robotic art play into peoples' emotional and affective encounters with them.

Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in …, 2005

Cynthia Breazeal 2002, 119 In recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and especially in robotics we can observe a tendency towards building intelligent artefacts that are meant to be social, to have 'human social' characteristics like emotions, the ability to conduct dialogue, to learn, to develop personality, character traits, and social competencies. Care, entertainment, pet and educational robots are conceptualised as friendly, understanding partners and credible assistants which communicate 'naturally' with users, show emotions and support them in everyday life. Social robots are often designed to interact physically, affectively and socially with humans in order to learn from them. To achieve this goal, roboticists often model the human-robot interaction on early caregiver-infant interactions. In this paper I want to analyse prominent visions of these 'socio-emotional' machines as well as early prototypes and commercial products with regard to the human-machine interface. By means of this I will ask how feminist critiques of technology could be applied to the field of social robotics in which concepts like sociality or emotion are crucial elements while, at the same time, these concepts play an important role in feminist critiques of technology.

ROBOT LOVE, 2018

ROBOT LOVE presents a highly topical theme: what does it mean to be human and to love in the context of robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and how to preserve certain distinctive qualities while we are merging with machines? There is already a tendency to see ourselves as quantitative machines. Meanwhile, in order to become human aware, robots need to incorporate typical human qualities. Qualities such as emotion, intuition, and most of all love. Now that human-like machines are entering the domestic sphere, AI may act as a mirror allowing us to delve deeper into ourselves and the current state of society. ROBOT LOVE, combining art, neuroscience, robotics and ethics, is like a force from the future we cannot yet grasp, but urges us to ask: can we learn from robots about love? This lavishly illustrated book accompanies the ROBOT LOVE exhibition presenting the work of 60 international artists working at the cutting edge of art, technology and social change, including Matthew Barney, Bart Hess, Roger Hiorns, Hito Steyerl, Philippe Parreno, LA Raeven. Renowned scientists and authors such as Margaret Atwood, Anton Grunberg, Reza Negarestani, Katarina Kolozova and Tobias Revell contribute with exploratory and persuasive essays. They make us aware of science fiction becoming science fact.

2008

To facilitate necessary task-based interactions and to avoid annoying or upsetting people a domestic robot will have to exhibit appropriate non-verbal social behaviour. Most current robots have the ability to sense and control for the distance of people and objects in their vicinity. An understanding of human robot proxemic and associated non-verbal social behaviour is crucial for humans to accept robots as domestic or servants. Therefore, this thesis addressed the following hypothesis:

Paladyn, Journal of Behavioral Robotics, 2020

Is it possible for human beings to establish romantic relationships with robots? What kind of otherness, or alterity, will be construed in the process of falling in love with a robot? Can a robotic companion mean more than being a tool for house-work, a caretaker, an aid of self-gratification, or a sex-doll? Phenomenological analysis of love experience suggests that romantic feelings necessarily include experiencing the alterity of the partner as an affective subjectivity that freely, willingly, and passionately commits to its partner. The romantic commitment is expected to stem from the sentient inner selves of the lovers, which is one of the features that robots are lacking. Thus the artificial alterity might disengage our romantic aspirations, and, as argued by many, will make them morally inferior to intraspecies love affairs. The current analysis will restrain from ethical considerations, however, and will focus on whether robots can in principle elicit human feelings of love.