Plant-Inspired Robot Design Metaphors for Ambient HRI

TL;DR

This work argues that ambient, plant-inspired metaphors offer a compelling alternative to anthropomorphic HRI by shaping presence, temporality, and expressivity in subtle, interpretation-rich ways. Using a Research through Design approach, it develops plant-based design primitives (leaves, stems, flowers, pots), builds speculative prototypes, and engagingly explores user imaginaries through workshops. The contributions include open-source artifacts, qualitative designerly insights, and a set of design considerations to translate plant metaphors into robot design, addressing presence, temporality, form, and expression. The study highlights the potential for ambient, gradual robot presence that can integrate into daily life while raising considerations about sustainability, privacy, and contextual appropriateness.

Abstract

Plants offer a paradoxical model for interaction: they are ambient, low-demand presences that nonetheless shape atmosphere, routines, and relationships through temporal rhythms and subtle expressions. In contrast, most human-robot interaction (HRI) has been grounded in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic paradigms, producing overt, high-demand forms of engagement. Using a Research through Design (RtD) methodology, we explore plants as metaphoric inspiration for HRI; we conducted iterative cycles of ideation, prototyping, and reflection to investigate what design primitives emerge from plant metaphors and morphologies, and how these primitives can be combined into expressive robotic forms. We present a suite of speculative, open-source prototypes that help probe plant-inspired presence, temporality, form, and gestures. We deepened our learnings from design and prototyping through prototype-centered workshops that explored people's perceptions and imaginaries of plant-inspired robots. This work contributes: (1) Set of plant-inspired robotic artifacts; (2) Designerly insights on how people perceive plant-inspired robots; and (3) Design consideration to inform how to use plant metaphors to reshape HRI.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Using a Research-through-Design process, we translate plant-inspired metaphors into robot prototypes and HRI imaginaries to illustrate the potential of plant metaphors to reshape HRI as a ambient, gradual and interpretive.
• Figure 2: Our leaf and stem primitives underwent several design iterations to realize plant-like expressive potential.
• Figure 3: Our prototypes leverage our primitives in distinct configurations to be probes of the plant-inspired design space.
• Figure 4: Annotated portfolio showcasing the Snake Plant imaginary and our participant's perceptions. Annotations are color coded: green for positive impressions, red for critiques, blue for questions or reflections, purple for concrete extension ideas.
• Figure 5: Annotated portfolio showcasing the Flower Plant and Dancing Pot imaginaries and our participant's perceptions.