Sweating Robots

VIDA 9.0 is an anual international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines. Projects include autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life. This year's winner was Alexitimia by Paula Gaetano Adi.


"Alexitimia is a term that means the incapacity to verbalize emotions, and it is the name of this robot that looks nothing like a robot. Alexitimia invites contemplation as it quietly exudes a dual impression of severity in its form and sensuousness in its surface. It passively invites a viewer to resort to touch, so as to satisfy an inevitable curiosity about what it is made of. Its only response is an autonomic body phenomenon: sweating."

Initially I thought a sweating robot was something very unique and a concept only possible as a an artistic pursuit. But with a little investigation it turns out sweating robots have been around awhile and are pretty common.

"Although thermal manikin technologies have been used to evaluate clothing comfort and heat stress for many years, no other manikin systems possess the unique measurement capabilities incorporated in Coppelius. The Coppelius manikin is capable of internally generating a controlled supply of moisture through 187 individually controlled sweat glands. Moisture and heat loss can be continuously monitored for full clothing ensembles in a variety of climatic conditions and simulated activity levels. The ability to precisely control sweating over lengthy test periods has been lacking in previous thermal manikin technologies."