This floating ‘Tinkerbell’ robot wants to be your friend

Researchers are working on a home Hindenburg, a helium-filled companion robot that floats around the house to keep you company. It doesn’t use a propeller, but instead its actual fins, which it flaps like a fish to propell itself.

Researchers at Japan’s Keio University and America’s MIT Media Lab built a proof-of-concept prototype of a helium-filled, whale-shaped, flapping-fin robot called the Soft Floating Robot (SFR).

Although they call it the “Cuddle-Fish,” they compare it in function to Tinkerbell.

Wait, why “Tinkerbell”?

Instead of a chatty companion robot that’s all up in your face, the SFR concept is to just be with you in your space, floating around silently. It’s an ambient companion to make you feel less alone. Researchers say that the robot, like Tinkerbell, is magical, present, lovable and irrational.

To me, the most interesting thing about it is that it’s a companion robot concept that, unlike other Attachment Economy hardware products and prototypes, it doesn’t mimick people or pets with expressive body language, yet still moves. It has no voice, so it doesn’t ape human speech. It’s designed to get you attached to it, but it doesn’t pretend to be attached back.

As a home robot, the use of flight combined with slow movement and a soft body solves the problem of navigating a house without knocking things over, getting stuck or falling downstairs.

A calming presence

In 1995, Xerox PARC’s Mark Weiser coined the phrase “calm technology.” He predicted a future category of gadget that lives at the periphery of attention rather than trying to be the center of attention.

What technology gave us instead was a hot war for everyone’s attention, i.e., the Attention Economy.