Post by @rowancheung

Researchers at Keio University and the MIT Media Lab have built a robot you’re actually meant to touch. The soft, helium-filled robot drifts through a room on gentle flapping fins, quiet and free of the loud buzz of a drone. The idea is to sidestep the “uncanny valley,” the unease that rigid, almost-human robots tend to trigger. With no face to get wrong and a soft, lightweight body, it communicates through movement alone, the way it hovers, drifts, and leans, and it has no rotors or pinch points to hurt you on contact. In their demos, the team showed it working as an alarm clock that nudges you awake, a study buddy, a reminder to get up and move, even a dance partner. Their bet is that people will welcome a robot into their personal space, a bit like a pet, as long as the hardware is built to be touched. If they’re right, the friendliest home robots of the future might not walk or roll. They might simply float. Study: “Floating Companion: Exploring Design Space for Soft Floating Robots in Indoor Environments” DOI: 10.1145/3800645.3813051