By Michaela Gordoni
Robot designers are increasingly making bots cuter so that they are more attractive for humans to interact with.
NBC News noted the cuteness worked in LA last week, when streets flooded with rain. One robot got stuck in the debris.
“She’s doing her best, you guys,” one social media user said in a video of a delivery robot struggling to drive onto a flooding curb. “Wait, I’m so sad. This is an empath’s worst nightmare.”
People have expressed sympathy and affection for the machines and have made efforts to help them in their tasks.
“If you were a robot developer or designer, you would certainly not want your product to be threatening. You would want people to feel comfortable,” said Ellie Sanoubari, a robot designer and postdoctoral researcher focusing on human-robot interaction. “You would want to signal that it is friendly, that it is not going to harm anyone.”
As robots move from factories to our streets, it makes sense that they would be designed to look appealing and given “faces.”
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Bigger eyes and “cute” noises can evoke “deeply seated biological responses in us,” Sanoubari said.
DoorDash’s food robot, Dot, is designed to foster “human acceptance” as it navigates roads at up to 20 mph.
“As humans, we are social animals. We have dogs, we have cats, we have all kinds of pets,” said Ashu Rege, the vice president of autonomy for DoorDash. “And Dot and robots like Dot want to be part of that family, so to speak. I think they absolutely have some kind of character or persona.”
Dot is designed to “look” in the direction it wants to go, and even makes eye contact with pedestrians when it signals for them to cross. It also makes sounds to let people know it’s there.
Another company, Interaction Labs, recruited TOY STORY writer Alec Sokolow to help design its interactive lamp, Ongo. The lamp is a wide-eyed robot that speaks in a cartoonish voice and moves like the Pixar lamp. It learns about its users over time, and can behave as an AI companion or chatbot.
It fits the bill for “somewhere between a pet and a concierge.”
“It’s like a character on THE JETSONS, if you know the old TV cartoon from the ’60s,” said Sokolow. “It is definitely a desk lamp, but I also see it as a character. I think the real thing that we’re trying to do is create a little personality.”
Sanbouri warns the dependency could arise from interacting with bots too much.
“One of the things that we can do is to be very transparent about the machine nature of the technology, especially when we’re dealing with vulnerable populations like children, or when robots are being used for elderly care and a lot of these things,” Sanoubari said.
There were numerous cute robots at the 2025 international Consumer Electronics show, Dezeen reported. One is a little faceless cat called Nékojita FuFu sits on the edge of cups and blows air to cool down drinks. Then there’s Ai Me, a toy-like chat device that can sync to smart home devices, monitor security and capture videos. It has a round face and a child-like voice.
Last year, Chinese company Fourier introduced the Gr-3, nicknamed “Care-bot,” a humanoid bot with a playful upside down face that is meant to help with everyday tasks while displaying emotions like empathy and kindness. It has 31 pressure sensors that can detect touch and displays blinking eye tracking and other emotional gestures in response.
It’s said to be a key contender in the cute humanoids category.
As the world leans into robotics, we may have to get used to seeing their cute faces around town.
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