The Design Museum in London just unveiled Mimus, Madeline Gannon's newest exploration of robot-human interdependence. From its enclosure, Mimus senses visitors and interacts with them.
Mimus is a giant industrial robot that's curious about the world around her. Mimus sees the world differently than us – she uses sensors embedded in the ceiling above to see everyone around her simultaneously. Mimus can react and move quickly around her space to follow your actions and try to decipher your body language. Madeline believes that the robots of the future shouldn't replace us, but rather augment our own abilities and be designed with a focus on human interaction. Her goal in this exhibit is that the behavior and design are intuitive in a way that people who have never even seen a robot before will be able to immediately understand how to interact with Mimus.
Here's a longer video of her previous project, which lays out more of her philsophy behind the project:
• Madeline the Robot Tamer and Mimus (via Autodesk)
