Designing the behaviors of mobile robots for museum exhibits

Lion Shoes is an art installation, which was created for the 21 21 DESIGN SIGHT Exhibition “COLOR-HUNTING” directed by Dai Fujiwara. This exhibition promoted a method to bring the power of color into the design process. Lion Shoes was designed by Fujiwara and the shoe manufacturer Camper based on the colors of lions, which were collected in Africa. Our team developed a system of mobile robots that moved the Lion Shoes on a table. We made the robots react to visitors and we observed how visitors viewed the exhibit. Although the results indicated that the reactive behaviors should have been obvious, we found that some visitors made emotional responses to the shoe robots.