An entertainment robot is, as the name indicates, a robot that is not made for utilitarian use, as in production or domestic services, but for the sole subjective pleasure of the human. It serves, usually the owner or his housemates, guests, or clients. Robotic technologies are applied in many areas of culture and entertainment.
Expensive robotics are applied to the creation of narrative environments in commercial venues where servo motors, pneumatics, and hydraulic actuators are used to create movement with often preprogrammed responsive behaviors such as in Disneyland's haunted house ride.
Entertainment robots can also be seen in the context of media arts where artists have been employing advanced technologies to create environments and artistic expression also utilizing actuators and sensors to allow their robots to react and change about viewers.
Relatively cheap, mass-produced entertainment robots are used as mechanical, sometimes interactive, toys that perform various tasks and tricks on command. The first commercial hit was, not surprisingly, modeled on the most popular pet: the canine.
Robot dogs as a fad have been produced with relatively little variation. These are some commercial models:
Robot dogs also appear fairly frequently in fiction compared to other forms of personal entertainment robots.
Despite those humanoid robots for utilitarian uses, some humanoid robots aim at entertainment uses, such as Sony's QRIO and Wow Wee's RoboSapien. They are usually capable of some advanced features like Voice Recognition or Walking.
While primitive robot toy models only execute standardized pre-programmed routines, sometimes little more than a wind-up toy could do, advancing technology allows for interaction with the user and/or other environmental stimuli (e.g. sensor-detected obstacles), thus somewhat resembling a live playmate.
Nevertheless, in the mind of some users, the things can hold the loved place of a pet, as demonstrated by the fact that some even sleep with a metallic one instead of a plush cuddly toy.
Manufacturers even found it pays to produce a toy that is essentially designed to be nurtured, rather like an egg in some 'parenting experience simulations', as proven by the success of the Japanese Tamagotchi.
For machines for the entertainment industry, cost is not the driving factor in design choices, and so the robots are often at a price point outside of what a private person would choose to pay
These robots are made for use as:
In 1956, Nicolas Schöffer created Cysp 1 (Spatiodynamique Cybernétique), a robot and dancer working together to create an abstract sculpture and choreography with concrete music by Pierre Henry. These works could react to color, sound, and light.
Survival Research Laboratories, in San Francisco, California, creates large destructive robotic performances to roast contemporary culture and express their distaste for the military-industrial complex.
Emergent Systems is creating large-scale interactive art environments where robots can respond to humans and each other as they react and evolve in robotic installations. Autopoiesis was one such artificial life work that allowed a series of robots constructed of grapevines to both act as individuals and a group.[2] Augmented Fish Reality allowed Siamese fighting fish to control their robots to meet across the gap of their glass fish bowls.
Intel Museum hosts the A.I.-driven interactive robot, ARTI, which is short for "artificial intelligence". This robot is considered to be a work of fine art and is capable of recognizing faces, understands speech, and even teaches the museum guests about the history of the museum and its founders, Robert Noyes and Gordon Moore. ARTI's face is made out of an inanimate silicon wafer.