Touch me Maybe?!

"Creation of Adam" - Michelangelo

When I started off with this idea it felt promising, unique and unexplored. The inspiration came from Mimosa pudica more popularly known as the Touch me not plant. Then I came across various projects from the past showcasing shyness, sensitivity, trust, nervousness, etc. This initially showed up as a road block because any work I do now would be a derivative. But going through it more I realized that so many people think in a similar way, where so many insecurities which are not so adamant and play a huge role in our society are portrayed through such projects.

For this assignment I will be creating a summary of a few projects from the past that have shown the above mentioned traits and most projects belong to this course itself:

SHYNY

One of the example which I saw, which stands out among them all was SHYNY.  SHYNY is a robot shy by nature and gets nervous when gets approached by people and expresses this anxiety by turning it's lights red and making a noise. But in a scenario when it's approached slowly by person it gets time to develop trust and allows people close. This shows how social anxiety develops over trust issues. 


Giving robots sense of touch

A few years ago a robot was built to understand how to feel. This is a really promising research area because until a robot can feel each and every touch it only visually understands whats happening. With the sense of touch also comes the intensity of  touch. From comforting soft touches to harsh claps. Each need a different amount of force and have a different feeling.

Projects used for inspiration

Conclusion

After getting inspired from my predecessors work, I'm interested in creating an artificial creature that showcases tiredness and boredom after having too many social interactions. As I myself feel tired after meeting to many people and I believe this trait is more common than we know. For example after a long day of social interaction we choose to ignore messages and calls to have a break.