Creative Robotics

Creative Robotics = Art x Robotics

Creative Robotics is an interdisciplinary field that brings together artistic creativity and robotics. It explores how the principles of art and the technologies of robotics can combine to create new forms of expression, interaction, and invention. In creative robotics, robots are not viewed solely as functional machines, but as collaborators, co-creators, and expressive entities that can participate in and even inspire creative processes.

Creative robotics embodies the concept of Art × Robotics. It represents the fusion of artistic imagination and robotic capability, where each informs and transforms the other. The field examines how creativity can emerge through robotic systems and how robotics can, in turn, expand our understanding of what it means to be creative.

Robotic Art (Art + Robotics) vs Creative Robotics (Art X Robotics)

Robotic Art (art + robotics) refers to artworks that employ robots as instruments, performers, or subjects. Creative Robotics (art x robotics), however, goes further. It does not only consider the artistic outcomes but also investigates the creative processes that occur when humans and robots collaborate.
Robotic art produces artistic experiences using robots; creative robotics also studies and designs the conditions that make such creativity possible. In essence, robotic art uses robots in art, while creative robotics also explores how robots can become part of the act of creation itself.

The Spectrum of Creative Robotics

Creative robotics exists along a spectrum that ranges from the highly technical to the deeply artistic. At one end, the focus lies on developing systems, behaviours, and interactions that enable expressive or adaptive robotic motion. At the other, artists and designers explore emotion, narrative, and aesthetics through robotic installations, performances, and generative works.

A creative roboticist may position themselves anywhere along this spectrum, blending technical innovation with creative exploration. By doing so, they help shape a growing field that redefines creativity through the lens of robotics and technology.

During ICRA 2023 (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation), I asked Ameca: “What is Creative Robotics?” and here is the answer:

During ICSR 2023 (15th International Conference on Social Robotics), I asked Naval and Furhat robots about connection of social, sociable, societal and creative robotics and here is their answers: