SEAS researchers develop affective tiny robots
Bartholomew at the Buffalo Science Museum
By Elizabeth Egan
Published June 27, 2025
Happy, sad, surprised, angry and neutral are the five emotions displayed by the tiny robot designed by SEAS researchers. The robot, named Bartholomew, is just taller than a penny, approximately 1 cubic inch in volume, but its capabilities expand much larger than its physical size.
Ryan St. Pierre, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Ifeoma Nwogu, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Jude Fogarty, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Engineering Education, have created the tiny robot that is capable of expressing dynamic facial emotions in response to human tactile handling, including petting, gripping, squeezing, shaking, lifting and more.
“A lot of the research that has been done with social robotics involves more humanoid forms or larger scale robots,” said Fogarty. “We wanted to see what this tiny scale, a cube with a face, could do for us and ask how humans make sense of communicating and how they respond to that based on empathetic or social norms.”
The robot has been used in a two-part user study to evaluate its effectiveness. The first study determined whether the five emotions expressed on the ½ inch face of the robot were identifiable. The team used Paul Ekman’s theory of emotional expression, a theory that facial expressions depicting the basic emotions of happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger and surprise, are universally recognizable, to establish the five emotions that the robot would portray. Fogarty noted that frequently used emojis have created a digital shorthand for basic emotions, making it easier for the participants to identify and differentiate the five emotions. All participants were able to accurately identify the five emotions.
The second part involved examining how humans changed their handling methods in response to the emotions expressed by the robot.
Results of this two-part study indicated that the robot’s facial expressions were perceived as meaningful and that humans were willing to alter their behavior accordingly.
In March, the team brought their robot to the Buffalo Science Museum to see how children would interact with the tiny bot.
St. Pierre said that an unexpected finding at the museum was that parents used the robot as a tool for encouraging empathy, asking the children what they could do to make the robot happy or what not to do to make it upset.
“One of the most fascinating things that happened at the museum was that parents would ask their kids to look at the faces and ask, ‘what made that happen,’” said St. Pierre. “It was an interesting process in terms of social imagination.”
When comparing how the adults in the study interacted with the robot versus the children at the museum, St. Pierre said that both groups appeared to view interacting with the robot as something playful and fun.
“There is just something in the design that invites that playful interaction.” said St. Pierre. “I think that a lot of adults and kids were very responsive to the emotions, and some kids really invested in emotional state of the robot and were less able to separate that it was an artificial being.”
In terms of future use, St. Pierre noted that the tiny bot could be used as a tool in educational settings.
“It can be utilized in teaching how to build robots and in a setting related to social interaction and teaching social norms, which could have a much more impactful way in education with the humanities than robots traditionally have,” said St. Pierre.