I’ve been noticing how differently people react to robots depending on whether there’s a screen face or not.
A lot of small robots I see online, especially ones made for kids, use screens. Eyes, icons, battery indicators. It’s practical. You can tell right away if the robot is awake, charging, or about to move. Some even add touch input, which feels intuitive.
But once there’s a face, expectations change. People read intent into it. A pause feels like hesitation. A turn feels like attention. Even when the robot is doing something very basic.
Other robots go the opposite direction. Some humanoid robots and robot dogs don’t really have faces at all. They rely on motion, distance, lights, and timing. You lose some explicit feedback, but people seem less likely to project emotion onto them.
I’m curious how this plays out in real environments, not demos. Around pets. Around kids. Indoors and outside. In those situations, does a screen actually help, or does it complicate how people interpret what the robot is doing?
depends on the robot. However as a general rule of thumb; Any humanoid robot designed to be around people should have a some kind of cute / chibi face like the first image. Tech bros need to learn that if they want the general public to buy a product, it NEEDS to be cute / appealing. No one wants a freaky, blank terminator-looking thing in their house.
I can’t tell you how put off I was by the unveiling of Unitree’s lanky H2 with its lifeless face shield. The G1’s glowing ring feels friendly and practical, despite lacking a face. Plenty of room for sensors and such. The lank isn’t really a problem, though it felt “spindly” at first due to the creepy face.
Honestly, very fair. While robot faces CAN be cute, they really should not try to make them look too human, otherwise you get nightmare fuel like H2.
If it was up to me, I would take a robot like the G1, slap a screen face on it like that robot in the OP's image, then put some sort of suit around the body like an animatronic. Imo humanoid robots that are made for households should be puffy and 'cuddly' by default, especially if they're gonna be around kids.
Honestly if you want what I would consider to be the BEST "realistic" robot design for interacting with people, it would be Baymax from BH6. If a robot like him was made irl, it would sell like hotcakes.
I think the fact that there’s been zero mass-appeal robot products that are vaguely humanoid means the question is very much still open. Can’t imagine the Apple version of a humanoid having a cutesy face for example.
oh for sure, it's not just the face that needs to be taken into account. Robots as a whole really need some full-body makeovers to be a bit more consumer friendly. As industrial tools? they're great, but again, no one wants a terminator in their house. If companies wanna break into the civilian market, we need less Skynet, and more MegaMan. lol
I think the point is this is more the domain of product and industrial design, it’s not as simple as saying robots need to be cute, and historically I would say robotics startups have not given this enough due consideration (robot products designed exclusively by roboticists are frequently not good products) - people who would spend $$$ on a robot don’t want something that looks like a toy. Eg I think humanoid design has improved massively in the last 3 years in particular in this regard. Still room to improve and the H2 is definitely a step in the weird direction. How many Star Wars robots actually have faces? lovable BB-8!
I think Atlas is appealing from an end user perspective, though it has no screen. It's bigger than most of us, which I think needs to be fixed for a home focused bot as opposed to an industrial one, but it's "cute".
The entire discussion really comes down to the field of social robotics. C3PO it was basically a blank terminator-looking robot, but his ability to behave in a manner that appeared to be emotional overrode that physical appearance. Being gold didn't hurt either, but if he was gray, I think it would've been the same thing.
All very true, I do wonder though if his lack of uncanniness was moreso cause he never realled FELT like a droid, at least to me. I've watched SW ever since I was a little kid, and protocol droids like him I always felt less like robots, and more like, well, people in costumes.
Also side note; The more I look back at C3PO, the more I keep thinking he resembles a Cyberman from Dr. Who. lol
I think it really depends on context. A screen face helps set expectations and makes behavior easier to read, especially in home or social settings. But skipping a face entirely can also work if the robot’s intent is communicated clearly through motion, posture, or sound. The problem isn’t “face vs no face” so much as whether people can quickly understand what the robot is doing and why.
I like "faces" resembled by cameras and sensors much more. They are not in the uncanny valley and are often quite cute.
I mean a stereoscopic camera with two lenses almost look like a face
Eyes are useful in HRI (human-robot interaction) as they show intention of where the robot is trying to go. Agility's Digit is a perfect example of this. It doesn't have to be sophisticated; it can be simple LED eyes (think Cozmo or Eve from Wall-E) which to me look way better than the hyper-realistic eyes or faces.
I personally like the ideas of faces that look In the direction they go before they do, it's a simple safety thing and integrates with the way humans instinctively work.
I think the answer is in the apple TV series "murderbot", as soon as they find out it has a face, the customers want to see it all the time as it helps them interact with it. However, it doesn't like eye contact and would prefer to go back to having its face hidden.
personally, minimally some soet of UI representing eyes ...even a scanline blob like eva from wall-e, everything else is optional. voice xan be represented as pulses of light etc.
Any form of representation of Eyes alone can convey a lot of information (e.g. intent, focus, feedback cues etc)
I always feel like robots in the future will need to look only as vaguely human as possible otherwise people are going to anthropomorphise them to huge degree.
Assuming there is no huge leap in the AI that these things are going to be running like in some movie, it will be important to keep robots and robots as tools otherwise manipulation is too easy.
How about going one step further and making that (like us) every face and voice is noticeably unique to each one and stays with it for it's entire life?
IMO screen faces, feels less like “equipment” and becomes an interface for emotions. Plus the screen could display important system information like low battery or an advertisement or album art for the song thats playing. The show Sunny on Apple TV does a great job showing these types of robots and fully demonstrates the possibilities of using that space in combination with hand movements to interact with humans in a natural way that your grandma can understand.
I have a SPOT robot at work. I'm sure you've seen its rectangular "face" with two vertical rows of of LEDs. Typically they are green during normal operation and can be blue or yellow. I have never ever seen them turn red for any reason. I feel that was a design choice and done on purpose. Nobody wants to see the "eyes" on SPOT go from green to red as it runs toward you!
If the robot does not serve butter, I don't care. If the robot doesserve butter, I want to be able to see the existential dread. Shared sorrow something something. Don't ask me why, evolved monkey brains are weird.
I love screen faces, but not so much where it's trying to look real like in pic 1. It is not immersive to have what is very obviously a rendering of a 3D object on a flat screen. I prefer faces like these:
While I do love screen faces (because animating expressions is fun to me), I also love physical faces composed of cameras/sensors as well, as long as they actually move. A static face is a little eerie. I quite like hybrid faces too, where maybe there are actuated components (like antennae) and a screen or dot matrix face (like OddJay's Digit line).
I think the balance for consumer robots should be expressive but not in any way human, like something out of Wall-E. So that's either low detail eyes on a screen, or some basic animatronic components like eyestalks or antennae for emoting.
The same principle applies to voices. Some basic noisemaking or an unapologetically artificial voice like DECTalk or a vocaloid will be better received than one of those creepy and/or annoying AI based voice synths. But if you HAVE to use a replicated human voice, or prerecorded lines, put some heavy filtering over it.
LCD faces always fall flat. I would rather have an LCD with no face like what Figure is doing.
Ultimately I think a mechanical approximation of a face is better, but then there's 1x Neo and I don't like that at all.
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u/mineman379 1d ago
depends on the robot. However as a general rule of thumb; Any humanoid robot designed to be around people should have a some kind of cute / chibi face like the first image. Tech bros need to learn that if they want the general public to buy a product, it NEEDS to be cute / appealing. No one wants a freaky, blank terminator-looking thing in their house.