An interactive conversation about the future of work – with a robot
The Challenge
An interactive experience with an industrial robot for a permanent exhibition in the Futurium – The House of the Future, Berlin.
The Result
An engaging data-informed installation in a permanent exhibition that attracted over 100.000 visitors in the first month.
Our Expertise
- Ideation
- Interaction Design
- Engineering
- Speculative Design
The Brief
A future where more and more robots will replace people at work seems inevitable. The public is rarely involved in this controversial topic, lots of questions are left open. The installation “Anyone Still Working Here?” invites visitors of the exhibition at the Futurium to negotiate the details of this undertaking with a prominent representative of the pro-robot movement: An industrial robot arm.
Our Approach
Futurium is a House of Futures. Here, everything revolves around the question: how do we want to live?Futurium
The exhibition space
A custom-made interactive glass panel serves as communication device between visitors and robot. The robot writes questions and draws user interfaces on the glass panel.
The visitor on the other side can respond via drawn buttons and emojis. Answers are followed by counter-questions – an interactive dialogue about the future of work begins.
Depending on which drawn button the visitor touches the dialogue starts.
Once a dialog completes the robot reacts with a drawing communicating its attitude. After this statement, it switches tools, from pen to sponge to clean the window for the next visitor. We equipped the robot with a custom tool head, featuring a self refilling pen and a felt sponge.
Multiple scenes keep the robot busy writing questions and reacting to the answers.
The robot communicates its willingness to do monotonous work via a drawing. Percentage values show the preferences of the visitors so far.
“Robot Dialogues” is commissioned by Futurium, a House of Futures and part of the permanent exhibition.
Credits
Commissioned by Futurium
Film and Camera by Matthias Maercks, Actress Hannah Sieh
Thanks to Susanne Jackson, interactive scape and
Jack Rusher for kindly providing his brilliant single line font.
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