From Mechanical Metamorphosis to Empathic Interaction: A Historical Overview of Robotic Creatures

Abstract

Humans have had a long history of fascination with building intelligent machines that depict themselves or move animatedly. This article explores the history of robotic creatures like Egyptian figurines, Greek mechanical inventions, 18th century ingenious automata, and modern kinetic mise-en-scène and robotic artworks. Several interactive robots showed the potential for emotional interaction between humans and machines. In the context of human-robot interaction, empathy with robots requires further discussions on the interaction design.