London Designer Exhibits Radically Different Robotic Designs at Design Interactions Show

A London based designer, Kevin Grannan, has designed a robot that looks like a human armpit.

This daringly different design is a coat of latex having holes on top from which hair sprouts out, made to resemble a human arm pit. These holes give out the ‘Japanese standard artificial sweat’. The artist has displayed the robotic armpit at the 2011 Design Interactions Show organised by the Royal College of Arts. Along with the arm pit, Grannan had showcased a bomb-disposal robot, which intimates humans with the help of fear-smell and a surgical robot that invokes a feeling of trust in the patients by releasing oxytocin. He also showed off many amusing designs for odour optimization applications. All the concepts he put up for display were intended to show the risk that advanced robotic systems could have on increasing subconscious human control.

In one of the interviews with Grannan, he had explained that currently the robotic research is concentrating on creating machines that mimic humans in action and appearance. He is of the opinion that this approach is wrong at the basic level itself. He feels that making robots play with human emotions makes humans more susceptible to being manipulated by them. He added that the basis of human-robot relation would be based on falsehood and ignorance. The fact that robots are set to become more predominant in our lives is a worrying factor for Grannan.