Mic Drop #11 - 'Robothings for social good' by Cristina Zaga

ROBOTHINGS FOR SOCIAL GOOD
Designing intelligent and animated everyday things for education, serendipity and empowerment.

Every days, objects, toys and even furniture could be imbued of intelligent and behavior to communicate in human term and even nudge toward collaboration, prosocial behaviors and reciprocity. I will present design and behavioral studies showing the effect of robothings on children prosocial behaviors in collaborative play. The implications from the research bring burning questions: How do we envision the robots of the future? What kind of intelligent tech will assist you in our everyday life? Will this tech look more like us? Or will robot AI, forms and behaviors follow function?

Cristina Zaga is a Ph.D. candidate at the HMI group (University of Twente) and a visiting scholar at the RiG lab (Cornell University). Cristina’s doctoral research focuses on designing “robothings” everyday robotic objects and toys, to promote children’s prosocial behaviors in collaborative play. She envisions a future of robothings, robotics embedded in everyday objects and architecture, that meaningfully interact with people to empower them. Cristina in her after-hours explores artistic intervention to advance the discourse on human-centered robotics, using speculative design to make what she calls poetic robots. Her work in HRI interaction design for robothings and poeticrobots received an HRI student design competition award and has been exhibited at the Eindhoven Design Week 2017. Cristina was selected as Google Women TechMaker Scholar 2018 for her research quality and her support to empower women and children in STEM.