ROBOTICS IN HOME ENVIRONMENT: DIFFUSION AND ACCEPTANCE THROUGH A PARASITIC DESIGN APPROACH

This paper presents a concept of an edutainment robot designed to improve the quality of domestic environment. The design process reflects on the role of robotics in home context highlighting the strong sales growth of robotic vacuum cleaner. A focus on the human robot interaction (HRI) aspects drives to the adoption of a parasitic design approach: it is not necessary to design a new robot that can move, sense, elaborate and interact, but rather combine a robot able to move around (like Roomba) with an intelligent module. The design process proceeds together with the prototype development.