Using design as a research tool, this project will explore near future roles for robots in everyday domestic situations: What new relationships, interactions and aesthetics might emerge in relation to different forms of robot intelligence, capability and function? What might the implications be of robots existing in our homes?

Over the coming years robots are likely to play a significant part in our daily existence. The idea of sharing our lives with these artificial entities in their various guises has captured the public imagination for centuries. Over the years robots have represented both our hopes and fears for what the technological future may hold, yet at this time they remain very much an enigma. There is a huge disparity between the profound potential robots exhibit in the realms of science fiction and our imagination; the contemporary reality of robotic vacuum cleaners, lawnmowers and pet dogs; and the vision of robots as seen through the eyes of computer scientists and engineers.

For Baudrillard pets are an intermediate category between humans and objects. Domestic Robots then perhaps sit comfortably at an intersection of products and pets. This project will begin by analysing both the natural world and the techno-domestic in terms of evolution, adaptation, breeding, niche and survival with the aim of defining various robot 'raison d'etre'; the roles, behaviours, interactions and forms that might enhance their chances of securing a place in the human home.

This 'naturalistic' research, supported by practical research into relevant emerging technologies and contemporary robot research and development, will ultimatly inform the design and development of a series of speculative prototypes. These will be disseminated through a variety of methods and media with the aim of generating a better understanding of what our robots could or shouldn't be.