What Can a Robot’s Skin Be? Designing Texture-changing Skin for Human–Robot Social Interaction

Abstract

Biological skin has numerous functions like protection, sensing, expression, and regulation. On the contrary, a robot’s skin is usually regarded as a passive and static separation between the body and environment. In this article, we explore the design opportunities of a robot’s skin as a socially expressive medium. Inspired by living organisms, we discuss the roles of interactive robotic skin from four perspectives: expression, perception, regulation, and mechanical action. We focus on the expressive function of skin to sketch design concepts and present a flexible technical method for embodiment. The proposed method integrates pneumatically actuated dynamic textures on soft skin, with forms and kinematic patterns generating a variety of visual and haptic expressions. We demonstrate the proposed design space with six texture-changing skin prototypes and discuss their expressive capacities.