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Ears and Expectations (Earspectations?)

A project log for HaRoCo @ The DesignLab

Emotive Support Robots

christineChristine 06/22/2018 at 16:530 Comments

When I found out we were in the DesignLab residency, one of the first things I said (after much celebration) was:

“Oh good! Now I can go next door and look at ears.”

To clarify: The Supplyframe DesignLab is next to the Pasadena SPCA, which is open to the public and has tons of fuzzy animals from dogs and cats to chickens, rabbits, and lizards.

Also to clarify: Ears are harder than you’d expect.

The cosmetic creation of a good ear isn’t impossible; in fact, there are experts in creating cosmetic replicas of human and animal ears. But most of my critters aren’t going for perfect realism. They’re hinting around the edges of life, they’re implying the right shapes and functions and letting you fill in the blanks. Getting the implication of the ear, and getting the right implication, can be more difficult.

Even though they can’t always hear, animal robots often look misshapen without ears. They look unfinished. But having prominent ears or realistic ears can create an expectation that the robot should hear or that the ears should articulate. So you’re caught a bit between a rock and a hard place-- how do you create a design that looks familiar, sweet, and complete, without implying function that doesn’t exist?

^Mostly and Often, HaRoCo-1 robots, with their differently shaped ears. On Often, the younger brother, we made the ears smaller to de-emphasize them.

Again, I rarely go for realism or familiarity, and this is on purpose. The more real the ear, the more your user expects it to do what an ear does. But if it looks like a stuffed animal, or if it is a creature they’ve never seen before, the expectations change. They don’t try to whisper in its ear or get disappointed when the ears don’t move.

If you can eliminate ears altogether without having an incomplete look, all the better. This is yet another reason why the baby harp seal was a good choice for the makers of the Paro. It’s also the reason why I substituted horns in place of ears on the Fur Worm. Horns are static, they don’t articulate, and they provide a sense of completeness to the face and body. (Horns can also come across as aggressive, but it’s hard to feel that something as small as the Fur Worm could possibly be aggressive.)

^ Cute Fur Worm with horns. Without horns, he just kind of looks like a sock :(

I suggested horns for the bigger critters, out of a sense of mischief, but Richard said no. I guess my days of creepy Starfish Cat-ing are over.

We have a website now! Also Twitter!

You can follow us for pictures on projects and such but there’s a good chance it’ll just be me tweeting like, the robot version of @dog_rates.

heart emoji,

Christine

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