Re:Bored?

Re: Bored?

This is a response to Bored? by Annefie.

I personally think an artificial creature that can be bored can be a great experience. The entire premise of robots is usually that they are hard-working and that they lack human tendencies (like a need for pay, rest, sleep, and entertainment) which makes them good for the automation of boring and labour-intensive work. Creating a robot that goes against that premise is pretty humorous and unconventional in itself.

How to make a bored robot

The biggest part of making a bored robot is that the behaviour needs to be unexpected, so I think that the best way to approach this would be to make a robot that's specifically made to complete a boring task, and have it lose interest over time.

Let me introduce you to our bot. He works in a factory to assemble some things, what these things are is open to interpretation, but the point is that its a lot of tedious and boring work. Now what the unexpected onlooker might not be expecting, is that the robot also perceives the task as tedious and boring.

Once something comes up that's only remotely distracting, the robot completely loses focus and stops working. In the image one of the factory workers walked past our robot. It got exited and turned around to interact with the factory worker instead of actually doing what it was made to do. It can of course also just zone out and look as the parts pass, remaining unassembled on the conveyor belt.

If the robot is forced to do the boring work for a long time it might just decide to stop and do something that's more mentally stimulating. It might start assembling the parts in a wrong way, or try to stack them on top of each other to see if it can make a tower out of the parts which it should be assembling.

In conclusion

I think making a robot that's bored can be great fun! It's an unexpected way for robots to behave so people won't see it coming. This, in turn, leads to what can be experienced as comic relief, since its lack of engagement fundamentally clashes with its industrious nature.

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