Mission Statement H.A.U.S.

Humanoid Robots mimic us humans by distorting what we are and do. It’s humans designing robotic things that way. Are those things about the desire for human self-projection as well as the promises of the utilisation of human embodiment?
How should we address humanoid robots – as machines, tools, contraptions, or instruments? They are agents. What kind of social role could a culture give them, what kind of social relations with those agents would be appropriate and useful for an individual?

Humanoid robots equipped with AI control are the most interesting type of robots for H.A.U.S. We call the humanoid robot we do research with, “Machina”, that is Latin for machine as well as for trickery.
Social robots are next media. Just like personal computers have evolved from sophisticated calculators to multimedia aggregates, humanoid robots will also turn into media as they get positioned amidst human interactions. While many current technologies discreetly mingle with our living environment, humanoid robots are bodily entities to simulate human skills and human appearance. The human lifeworld is spatial. Those robots are meant to operate in our private and intimate spaces. In H.A.U.S. research, space is conceived mainly as a holistic substrate, the constant transformation of entities bearing meaning, their positions and their relations.

The up to be invented relation of humanoids and live worlds is the focus of our research endeavours. Hence, we work to articulate the propositions for humanoid robots controlled by AI within sociocultural and spatial human relations.

Oliver Schürer