Ethics of Robotic Aesthetics

This article explores the relationship between expressivity morphology and acceptance, defining the conditions that make service robots desirable by man. In the attempt to define “an ethic for robotic aesthetics”, it is discussed the evolution happened in robot design and how they where perceived by people, both in scientific community and in pop culture. The conception of robots begin with an approach strongly oriented to a biological imitation, especially anthropomorphic, conversely, nowadays, the scenario is various and robots assume a multitude of synthetic aesthetic languages and, moreover, are characterized on the base of the context. In the final part of this article, it is described, through a series of examples, the contemporary scenario in which to the multitude of languages is added also the contamination of the digital world, outlining new morphological types. One of the examples is Virgil, a service robot for Cultutal Heritage enhancement, designed by the research team JOLCRAB Telecom Italia/Politecnico di Torino.