Technocultural research into robotics
Edited by Chris Chesher and Justine Humphry
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Intellectual production after AI: living alongside Deep Research
Chris Chesher Forthcoming as a ‘probe’ in Explorations in Media Ecology to be published as ‘Re-assembling agency: Invocational AI actants in media ecologies and Actor-Network Theory’. Introduction In working on this probe, I have been both thrilled and deeply unsettled by using ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, an AI that does more than just chat. It…
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Meeting the Machines: Encounters with Jibo and Ameca
17 October 2025 In the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure — and slight awkwardness — of two memorable encounters with social robots. Both were designed to be companions of a sort: mechanical beings endowed with gestures, voices, and a glimmer of personality. One, Ameca, greeted me with eerily expressive eyes at the Computer…
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The Age of the Screen-Faced Robot
26 January 2025 Have you noticed how humanoid robots are starting to look like they’ve stepped off the pages of a slick sci-fi graphic novel? The new wave of mechanical beings – think Tesla’s Optimus, Figure 01, and others – sport glossy, obsidian face-plates that reflect studio lights with a futuristic sheen. We’ve arrived at a moment…
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Back to RobotWorld Seoul (2024): Then & Now
October 2024 I first attended RobotWorld in Seoul back in 2010, when the expo was a relatively modest affair, with only a handful of impressive demonstrations amid clunky prototypes and rows of servo-motor vendors. Returning in 2024, I expected to be overwhelmed by sleek humanoids and fully autonomous service droids—and while there were definite signs of progress,…
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Service through the eyes of a robot: Robophilosophy 2024 presentation
Service – from the robot‘s perspective In this paper, (video below), Chris Chesher and Justine Humphry ask: What does it mean to perform service work as a robot? This question might seem like a thought experiment straight out of a science fiction novel, but it was the starting point for our recent research at the…
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Reflections on Robophilosophy 2024
Robophilosophy in Aarhus was even better than I expected. Lots of good papers and many nice people working with humanities and social sciences approaches to robots. This theatre performance, called Replik.a, by a Stuttgart troupe, was a highlight. I really was not sure whether the second actor was a human or a robot until I…
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From novelty to normal: Dining with robot waiters across Kuala Lumpur
Introduction It’s July 2023, and I’m in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with my wife, Cathy, on a mission to explore a trend that has quietly taken root in the city’s dining scene: robot waiters. Once a futuristic novelty popping up in social media feeds, these mechanical servers have begun to settle into the everyday rhythms of…
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Pepper Parlor
Imagine eating morning tea surrounded by social robots. Pepper Parlor is a concept restaurant that offers just that experience.
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Eye machines: Robot eye, vision and gaze article published
The International Journal of Social Robotics has published the article Fiona Andreallo and I wrote on the three dimensions of eye machines: the eye itself, the operation of vision, and the intersubjective significance of the gaze.