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Details
Robotic Design, Materials Science and Experimentation, Concept Generation, UX/UI Research 

Tools
3D Printing, 3D Modelling (Blender)

Date
Winter 2023

Mentor
Cynthia Lu

Team
Manini Banerjee (BFA ID + Computation + Sustainability)
Vir Joseph Naidu (MID RISD, BDes) 

When a person is anxious, their heart starts to race. When they are scared, they get goosebumps. These are bodily reactions that we cannot hide.

Despite this, we as a society have learned to create a facade over time to mask our emotions and state, as a way to appear emotionally intelligent, strong and desirable.

The S-Orb is a robotic entity that acts as a robotic extension in order to regain comfort in expressing your involuntary feelings.

Let us connect at an elemental level:
Hold your S-Orb, connect to another’s S-Orb, and feel their emotions.

The S-Orb is a robotic entity that interrogates the boundaries of the uncanny valley through its amorphous skin-like embodiment.


The S-Orb is a symphony of pulse, skin, fluid and sensation that comes together to create unexplainable and
unspoken  human-to-human and human-to-robotic bonds.

We have substituted metal and screws for skin and veins - thus ushering in this renaissance of what we perceive
to be robots to be and their appearance within humanity. While interaction with humanoid robots still remains unsettling,
the S-Orb acts as an intermediary stepping stone to introduce amorphous interaction to users to ease our adoption of these robots.


The robot acts as an object of telepresence that permits remote human connection in a tangible way.

This is a physical and intimate bond that could help us understand each other better - creating a more empathic and harmonious society.





The S-Orb reflects human emotion by reading its user’s electromyographic signals. Thus, triggering spinal motion, sweat and heat responses.
This creates an innate human language which is expressed through the S-Orb’s embodiment.