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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

For interesting examples of robot UX, I recommend MaSiRo project:

https://www.en.masiro.cafe/

The robots have room for improvement regarding motion and general intelligence, but they absolutely nail the non-threatening look and feel.

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These look terrifying.

I guess a lot of people must want humanoid robots, but they’re mostly in the uncanny valley for me, and the more realistic they are, the more uncomfortable I’d be.

If I had a robotic assistant at home or in the workplace, I’d want something WALL-E like. Emotive lights or even an 8-bit display with expressions is fine. But no hair or anything completely unrelated to function, please.

Also, the robot voice. A while ago, SF movies were projecting robot voices easily distinguishable from human ones. I made peace with the idea that I'd hear something in line with those vocal timbres when the time would come, but nowadays the phone chatbots (and also other use cases where they resort to employing assisted human-robot interaction) are all imitating human voices. I find it jarring, it's like when I figure out that some (human) stranger was trying to trick me by impersonating someone I know.

I’ve come across that one before - I think the problem is the designer’s face is figuratively showing through. Some artists are good at hiding it or some just has a pretty face in real life that it’s not a problem, but in this case the face isn’t working.

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