How would you feel about giving a robot a cuddle?

A new science and art collaboration is looking to explore people’s responses to cuddling a robot. ‘Embrace Angels’ is an unique live experience at Nottingham Contemporary that will explore how people and robots can interact.

This interactive performance-installation taking place on the 22nd and 23rd July 2025 is a collaboration between computer scientists at the University of Nottingham (part of the Somabotics: Creatively Embodying AI program) and award-winning artists and pioneers in AI, Robotics, and human intimacy, Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat.

'Embrace Angels is a really unique way to undertake research in the wild, involving the public in the capture of data in real time that will be used to train the robots. People will embrace the robots that are under human control and we can stand back and gather data on what happens and what responses are and then that will be used to inform the AI so that in the next phase the robots will be completely autonomous' - Professor Steve Benford, Director of the Somabotics program.