Created by scientists and explosion theory artists from the University of Nottingham cat royale is a multispecies world centered around a custom-built enclosure where three cats and a robotic arm coexist for six hours a day during a 12-day installation period.
Professor Steve Benford from the University of Nottingham and colleagues said: “Robots are finding a place in everyday life, from cleaning houses to mowing the lawn, shopping around hospitals and delivering parcels.”
“In doing so, they will inevitably have interactions and encounters with animals.”
“They could be companion animals, pets that share a home, guide dogs that help people navigate public places, but they could also be wild animals.”
“Often these encounters are unplanned and incidental to the robot’s primary mission, such as navigating a world inhabited by cats riding Roombas, guide dogs confused by delivery robots, and lawn mowing robots. Such as a hedgehog.”
“But it could also be intentional. We could also design robots to serve animals.”
“Little is known about how to design robots for animals, even though such encounters are inevitable, whether planned or not. Can you do that?
“We present Cat Royale, a creative quest to design a domestic robot to enrich cats’ lives through play.”
schneiders other. It suggests we need more than carefully designed robots to care for cats. In addition to human interaction, the environment in which the robot operates is also important. Image credit: Schneiders other., doi: 10.1145/3613904.3642115.
Cat Royale was unveiled at the World Science Festival in Brisbane, Australia in 2023, has been touring ever since, and just won a Webby Award for its creative experience.
The installation centers around a robotic arm that provides activities to make cats happier, including dragging a “mouse” toy along the floor and raising a feathered “bird” into the air. , which included feeding the cat treats.
The team then trained the AI to learn which games cats liked best so they could personalize their experience.
“At first glance, this project is about designing a robot that can play with cats and enrich the lives of families,” Professor Benford says.
“But beneath the surface, we are exploring the question of what it takes to entrust robots to care for our loved ones, and in some cases, ourselves.”
By working with Blast Theory to develop and study Cat Royale, researchers gained important insights into robot design and interaction with cats.
They had to design a robot that would pick up toys and deploy them in a way that excited the cats, all while learning which games each cat liked.
They also designed an entire world for the cat and robot to live in, providing a safe space for the cat to observe and sneak around the robot, and decorating it so that the robot had the best chance of spotting the approaching cat. did.
This means that robot design involves not only engineering and AI, but also interior design.
If you want to bring a robot into your home to take care of your loved ones, you will likely need to redesign your home.
Dr Ike Schneiders, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, said: ‘As we learned through Cat Royale, to create a multi-species system where cats, robots and humans are all taken into account, you simply need to design robots. That’s not enough.”
“We needed to ensure the animal’s health at all times, while also ensuring that the interactive installation would attract a global (human) audience.”
“Many factors were considered in this, including the design of the enclosure, the robot and its underlying systems, the different roles of the humans, and of course the selection of the cat.”
The authors announced their results in CHI 2024 meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
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Ike Schneiders other. Design multispecies worlds for robots, cats, and humans. CHI ’24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. article #593; doi: 10.1145/3613904.3642115
Source: www.sci.news
