Clumsy Creatures
Clumsiness, defined as “poor coordination, movement or action”, is something that we all experience sometimes. When we are distracted we might trip, drop our belongings or bump into objects. Clumsiness is often caused by an unawareness of our surroundings, due to our mind being occupied with other things, like an upcoming exam or a fight you just had with your partner. At a low level, this is totally normal: it makes us human.
When we think about robots, we don’t really see them as being ‘clumsy’. Robots and other artificial creatures are often created with a purpose and rarely have their ‘minds’ occupied by something other than that purpose. This does not give them any space to wander their minds and be clumsy. Also, intentionally programming robots to be clumsy would be very inefficient. Nevertheless, robots can be accidentally clumsy, and that provides many funny and cute examples.
Clumsy robot dog
One of my favorite videos is of this very smart and capable dog robot that accidentally trips over a banana peel - a prank only cartoon characters would normally fall for. Very clumsy if you ask me, but no-one on the programming and design team probably took in mind that banana peels could potentially be a big enemy of their robot.
This robot that tried to escape it's lab in Russia, but ran out of battery in the middle of the street and thereby caused a 40 minute traffic jam.
A compilation of clumsy robots a.k.a. me after a few drinks.
Artist Patrick Tresset made his drawing robot intentionally clumsy, so that its artworks would be more interesting and touching, and it would excite more empathy in the viewer when the robot made a small failure.
Furthermore, studies have shown that clumsy robots are actually more likeable - is that because they show us their 'human side' rather than always being smarter, more flawless than us? They definitely argue for programmers and designers to intentionally make their robots and creatures not entirely perfect, and, if possible, a little bit clumsy.
Perfect is boring anyways right? Clumsy people - and robots - definitely have more fun! 😉