Design Strategies for Representing the Divine in Robots

Abstract

Robot appearance morphology can be divided in anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and functional. In previous recent work, a new catego-ry was introduced, called "theomorphic robots", in which robots carry the shape and the identity of a supernatural creature or object within a religion. This approach can bring some advantages for certain categories of users such as children and elders. This paper is an exploratory discussion over practical design strategies for repre-senting the divine in robots, based on theoretical insights on the historical intertwinements between sacred art and robotics. The illustrated concepts will be followed in the realisation of the proto-types of the first theomorphic robots.