With _The Blind Robot_, the aim is to further understand the degrees of engagement, whether intellectual, emotional or physical, that are generated when a social robot intimately touches a person. Initially, _The Blind Robot_ is a minimalistic piece of mechanical engineering. The rationale is to start from a recent known cultural artifact—the robot arm—and transform it from a high precision tool into a fragile, imprecise and emotionally loaded agent.

_The Blind Robot_ comprises a typical robotic arm equipped with an articulated hand. In this installation, visitors are invited to sit in the front of this machine and engage into a non-verbal dialogue with it. The robot delicately explores the body—mostly the face and upper body—of the visitor in a manner that recalls what blind people do to recognize a person or an object. On a nearby screen or projection the machine then produces a visual rendering of what its fingertips have “seen.”

_The Blind Robot_ is a direct reference to the works of Merleau-Ponty and his example of the body extension of the blind man’s cane. When Feenberg analyzes Merleau-Ponty’s blind man’s cane, he concludes that the cane does more than sense the world; it also reveals the blind man as blind. It is this very aspect that the _Blind Robot_ exploits: to create an empathic situation and a positive pre-disposition to the engagement.

Furthermore, _The Blind Robot_ is a direct allusion the chess-playing “Mechanical Turk”. _The Blind Robot_ emanates a sense of intentionality and it becomes a Turing test of agency and perceived artificial life. _The Blind Robot_ has the complex task of touching people softly, something achieved by hardly any contemporary robots. We recently verified this hypothesis by testing the robot with more than 100 people. The fictitious social role (a blind person) augments the act of touching and the robot’s agency via the potential of the created emotional connection between the human visitor and the robot.

Links: http://www.processing-plant.com/#project=blind

Mechatronics: Dennis Low; programming: Vineet Kuruvila.

Support: Start Up Grant and MOE Tier1 Grant (Nanyang Technological University)

Louis-Philippe Demers (CA/SG) makes large-scale installations and performances. His main areas of work are entertainment robotics and interaction design. Over the past two decades, he has participated in more than 70 artistic and stage productions and has built more than 300 machines. His projects can be found in theater, opera, subway stations, art museums, science museums, music events and trade shows. Demers’ works have been featured at major venues worldwide. He was Professor of Digital Media and Exhibit Design/Scenography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. Since then he has joined the Interaction and Entertainment Research Center and the recently founded School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).