Felix the Robot

Visitor magnet and globetrotter

Exhibit

The robot that looks like a human

When Felix raises his eyebrows or smiles with joy, the components of his robot head emit a clicking noise. Not exactly a human sound, but his grin looks real and encourages the visitors to start an emotional interaction.

People have a tendency to assign human traits like character, emotions, and behaviour to inanimate objects. This is what the interactive exhibit Felix the Robot plays on: on the one hand, the visitors see a pointedly technological construction (turned and milled parts, Bowden cables, and cogwheels); on the other hand, they perceive Felix’s facial expressions as emotional behaviour. They respond to him as if he were a person and immediately start interacting with him. An exciting back-and-forth between these two levels of perception occurs, as Felix can express the most important emotions people interact with in real time: joy, grief, anger, doubt, enervation and surprise.

Felix the Robot is a valuable exhibit in contexts with a focus on intensive visitor involvement, especially within IT-related topics and industries. Created originally for the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, you can now meet Felix in Dortmund, Beijing, Shenyang, and even in Perth, Australia.