Tech companies are making their robots cute to try to win over humans

Whether they’re delivering food or folding your laundry, consumer-facing robots are increasingly being designed to be more palatable to the humans who interact with them.

When the streets of Los Angeles flooded with rain last week, some of the city’s residents found themselves feeling sorry for a peculiar object: a food delivery robot floundering in water and debris.

“She’s doing her best, you guys,” one social media user says in a video posted to Instagram showing a delivery robot struggling to drive onto a flooding curb. “Wait, I’m so sad. This is an empath’s worst nightmare.”

In many major cities, the delivery robots taking over sidewalks bear facial expressions and names of their own. In turn, some observers have reacted with affection and sympathy for the machines as they trek along: They’re helping them navigate through debris, pushing crosswalk buttons for them, even wishing them luck on their journey.

As AI-powered robots grow more common in households and public spaces, tech developers are racing to figure out how to make them appealing to humans. Lately, that has meant designing robots to have cute, almost petlike appearances.

“If you were a robot developer or designer, you would certainly not want your product to be threatening. You would want people to feel comfortable,” said Ellie Sanoubari, a robot designer and postdoctoral researcher focusing on human-robot interaction. “You would want to signal that it is friendly, that it is not going to harm anyone.”