Plant-Inspired Robot Design Metaphors for Ambient HRI

TL;DR

This paper explores using plant metaphors to design ambient, subtle, and expressive robots for human-robot interaction, challenging traditional anthropomorphic paradigms through iterative prototyping and user insights.

Contribution

It introduces a set of plant-inspired robotic prototypes and provides design insights on how plant metaphors influence perceptions and interactions in HRI.

Findings

Plant-inspired robots evoke perceptions of subtle presence and temporality.

Prototypes demonstrate new expressive forms based on plant morphologies.

User perceptions reveal potential for more ambient and less demanding HRI designs.

Abstract

Plants offer a paradoxical model for interaction: they are ambient, low-demand presences that nonetheless shape atmosphere, routines, and relationships through temporal rhythms and subtle expressions. In contrast, most human-robot interaction (HRI) has been grounded in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic paradigms, producing overt, high-demand forms of engagement. Using a Research through Design (RtD) methodology, we explore plants as metaphoric inspiration for HRI; we conducted iterative cycles of ideation, prototyping, and reflection to investigate what design primitives emerge from plant metaphors and morphologies, and how these primitives can be combined into expressive robotic forms. We present a suite of speculative, open-source prototypes that help probe plant-inspired presence, temporality, form, and gestures. We deepened our learnings from design and prototyping through prototype-centered workshops that explored people's perceptions and imaginaries of plant-inspired robots. This work contributes: (1) Set of plant-inspired robotic artifacts; (2) Designerly insights on how people perceive plant-inspired robots; and (3) Design consideration to inform how to use plant metaphors to reshape HRI.