humanoid robots do not need to look like people
at the royal college of art i kept asking a question nobody seemed particularly interested in: why do we keep making robots that look like us?
the assumption runs deep. a robot that cares for people should have arms to hold them, a face to look at them, legs to walk beside them. the humanoid form is treated as obvious. inevitable. i wanted to argue that it's neither.
so i made a blanket.
a blanket as robot. soft, warm, heavy in the way that calms you. it could sense pressure and temperature. it could shift its weight, tighten gently around shoulders, warm specific areas. it did everything a care robot is supposed to do, but it felt like being held rather than being watched.
this was a design fiction project -- speculative, deliberately provocative. the blanket wasn't a product proposal. it was a question made physical. what happens to our idea of care when the carer has no eyes? no hands? no face to read your expressions?
it turns out people respond to warmth and weight more honestly than they respond to faces. a humanoid robot triggers performance -- you smile at it, you speak clearly, you behave as though observed. the blanket triggered something closer to surrender. people closed their eyes. they breathed more slowly.
we default to human form because we lack imagination, not because it's the right answer. the most caring thing a robot could do might be to disappear entirely into the texture of comfort itself.