15:00 - 16:40
Session: S31
[Enabling Practices] + Design
obj1036
Re-Balance, a perception-enabled chair for multi-species domestic agency
Keywords:
Posthuman Design; Human-Robot Interaction; Thing Ethnography; Thing Perspective; Social Robots
Author(s):
Mirko DANELUZZO, Michele DANELUZZO

The paper presents the theoretical, conceptual, and technical framework of ‘Re-Balance: the chair that doesn’t know it is a chair’, an automated kneeling chair able to construct interactions in various domains of action. This pet furniture is designed to extend our daily life ecologies and to enrich their interactive experiences both on the physical and emotional levels. A unique acoustic and motion language expresses different personalities willing to create special relationships with human and nonhuman actors (living beings or algorithmic intelligence). The project resides at the intersection of posthuman design and human-robot interaction, studying contemporary multi-species cohabitation and social design modes. This chairbot is thought to be an actual commercial product, as a platform for collective research. At the time of writing this paper, the project is at the initial stages of the development of mockups and prototypes for the ergonomic studies and the communication skills of the chairbot via movement and sounds.