"Who's a good boy?"
With the evolution of more advanced robots used for manufacturing and production and the emergence of new technologies and bots able to do many of our tasks, another type of robot and artificial creature that also evolves are the social robots. More specifically here, the pet robots.
Imagine coming home to your pet dog, calmly waiting on its charging station for you to come home. As soon as it hears your voice, it awakens and demands the social interaction and physical attention of a pet. There is no need to feed it or take a walk for it, but it needs to have that daily head pat and stroke on the back to be happy. Let's focus on that specific characteristic of them; Robots that love to be pet.
Vector
Screenshot from Vector's presentation video
Vector is a domestic and assistant robot developped by Anki.
One of its many functionalities is the social interaction with its owner and surrounding. Through the sensors on top of its head, it is able to feel whenever someone is petting it. The robot responds to that action with some elements similar to the ones of a cat: Slowly closing the eyes, emitting a purring noise, lifting the head, etc.
Aibo
Aibo is an artificial intelligent dog developped by Sony. The goal here is for Aibo to mimick the behaviour of a dog with its dog-like appearance and dog toys accessories.
Of course, another dog-like element is the petting and its body language when that happens. It is possible to pet the top of Aibo's head, under the chin, on the back and even on the belly. To which it reacts with actions such as closing the eyes, leaning the head down, laying down, showing the belly and more to show pleasure and emphasize the dog-like behaviour.
Screenshot from Aibo's trailer
Domgy
Screenshot from the Domgy presentation video
Domgy is a robot developped by ROOBO. Its motricity and movement capabilities are less advanced than the ones of Aibo, but it does not prevent it from being a pet robot too.
Domgy loves to have its head and legs pet, even sometimes at the same time. To show pleasure, it mostly uses the sounds it makes and the LED display representing its eyes. That display can be used to show its eyes closing or sometimes just one eye closing, but it can also display animated hearts instead of its eyes to emphasize its happiness.
Kiki
Kiki is an AI companion and pet robot developped by Zoetic AI. As for Domgy, Kiki has a more simple design compared to other robots, not allowing it to move around a space by itself, for example. Still, this does not decrease the possible petting interactions.
Kiki loves being pet on the head, on the side of its body and even enjoys a small touch on the nose. To display pleasure, it mainly uses sounds, head movements and the movement of the eyes displayed on its LED screen. It can move its head back and forth while being pet, emit small noises similar to the ones of an animal, even a purring type of sound. Kiki seems to also try to look at the person petting it, accentuating the social interaction that way.
Screenshot from Kiki's trailer
My take on it
I imagine an artificial creature with a simple design, something having a small box for a body, wheels for motricity and a pair of eyes displayed through an LED screen in the front of it. What I've been able to learn from these examples is that the eyes are very often used to show the creature pleasure. This creature would simply move around, for example on a table, and have a simple exploratory behaviour when nothing special happens. Everytime someone pets it, the creature emits a purring noise that intensifies the longer the person pets it and the eyes displayed on the screen close increasingly the more it's being pet, to show the state of relaxation. If the creature is pet from the top, it slowly rocks itself from the left to the right to show excitement. If the creature is pet from the sides, it tries to lean more towards that direction to get deeper strokes. Whenever the petting stops, the creature emits small noises to show it wants more and moves excitedly, maybe even jumps to accentuate the fact it wants more. If no additional petting action is done, the creature emits a small disappointed noise and displays sad eyes through the LED screen before going back to its original idle state.
Sketches of the imaginative pet creature
1) Simple box design, with wheels and and LED screen for the eyes
2) Rocking itself left and rightand purring while being pet
3) Showing sad eyes and emitting a sad noise when no petting happens after a while
4) Jumping to show it wants more petting
