Skins, Clothes, Costumes, Bling: How and Why Experts Dress their Robots

While HRI researchers have suggested that clothing for robots has the potential to improve human-robot interaction, there is little research on how clothes are currently designed for robots in the field. Through interviews with 11 experts, we learned who designs and produces clothing for robots, how people dress their robots, and why. Employing qualitative analysis via open coding, our findings reveal that experts conceptualize robot coverings as not just clothes, but also as skins, costumes, and accessories. We also find that robots are dressed to blend in with their environment or stand out during special events. Experts tend to dress robots to demonstrate individual identity, appeal to different audiences, and enhance a robot’s expressivity. These interviews emphasize the importance of using specialists to dress robots due to the technical complexity involved in adapting clothing to robots and the cultural considerations required for appropriate styling, based on occasion.