GINA – Designing Social Robots 

09 | 2018 – 12 | 2021

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GINA is a project about assistance and social robots, funded by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research Germany). I not only took the lead of the GINA consortium (partners see below), but also supported and researched eight current German robotics projects over a period of 39 months.

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Together with my colleagues of the consortium I conducted more than 70 interviews with these roboticists to identify gaps in research. We came up with several new design approaches, such as the method techno-mimesis or a new ethics workshop for robot designers.  

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Further, I conceptualized focused workshops for design and robot specialists (e.g. about design fiction, robotic superpowers, hybrid product designs). And – together with my co-lead Diana Löffler – I organized large-scale networking events sometimes for more than 200 roboticists, sometimes online, due to the pandemic.

 

In GINA we also worked together with citizens – the potential users of the robots to be developed – and artists such as illustrators, actors and fiction authors – who inspired the roboticists and citically reflected their robot concepts. 

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Cooperation: 
DLR (German Aerospace Center)

University of Göttingen

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich

University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf

User Interface Design GmbH 

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Illustrations: 

Johanna Benz

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Video: 

University of Siegen

(Dörrenbächer, Neuhaus, Hassenzahl)

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