Hello, Robot: Design between human and machine

Robotics now: from transport drones and intelligent sensors to the debate around Industry 4.0

Hello, Robot.: Design between Human and Machine investigates how robotics is becoming part of our everyday lives, demonstrating that design in its traditional function as a mediator is indispensable if robots are to become a visible reality and not just remain hidden in washing machines, cars and cash machines.

The volume clarifies where we already encounter these intelligent machines and where we may come across them in the near future: in industry, in the military and in everyday settings; at nurseries and retirement homes; in our bodies and in the cloud; when shopping and having sex; in video games and, of course, in film and literature.

In a series of in-depth essays and interviews, experts such as the science-fiction author Bruce Sterling, novelist Douglas Coupland, architect Philip Beesley, and the design duo Dunne & Raby explore the question of how we deal with our environment becoming increasingly digital, smarter and more autonomous. They highlight our often ambivalent relationship to new technologies and discuss the opportunities and challenges that are posed to us as individuals and as a society in this context.

Hello, Robot. broadens the scope of the discussion to the ethical and political questions with which we are faced today in the light of technological advances in robotics, while confronting us with the contradictions that are often found in the answers to these questions.

Hello, Robot argues that robots are much more than powerful tools, having preoccupied the human imagination for thousands of years in one form or another. As their presence becomes more commonplace, humans begin to soften and anthropomorphize robots. (The Architects Newspaper)