I set out to explore movement as a way of communicating and interacting with robots. But not so much from our movement…but the robot's. Must robots need to look like us? Sound like us to establish a link? Is that even the best way to communicate? We are wired to decode movement in many ways better than text, for instance, or even appearance. And yet most feedback mechanisms opt to rely on the latter two rather than gestures.
To address this I created a simple robot named Mimic that scans an area looking for a face. When it detects one it responds by gesturing and thus initiating a feedback or communication cycle. With its gestures the robot hopes to indicate the quality of the connection.
With Mimic I hope demonstrate that movement can be as effective, if not better than other feedback mechanisms.