SYMBIONT is an experimental research project exploring the intersection of soft robotics, tactile communication, biomorphic design, and human connectivity. One pictorial and one demo from this work were published at the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2025, showcasing its design process and conceptual framework.
Why sea-life forms and starfish-like shapes?
I drew inspiration from marine life because of their softness, fluidity, and distributed morphology. Creatures like starfish and tentacled organisms naturally embody lifelike qualities that feel organic and ambiguous. These biomorphic qualities made them ideal metaphors for intimacy and communication.
For example, tentacle-like extensions guided the placement of flex sensors, while central bulges offered a natural cavity for the microcontroller. The starfish-like structure also enabled distributed touch points, where each limb could host input and output, reinforcing the idea of communication as multi-sensory and multi-directional. Unlike rigid or geometric designs, marine-inspired forms (or in general bio-inspired forms) invite people to assign emotional meaning, making them a powerful bridge between technology and human affect.
Effort in creating “artificial creatures”
From the start, I wanted SYMBIONTs to feel less like robots and more like living companions. I paid careful attention to their individual identities, even selecting deliberately different wire color for the internal circuitry so that each SYMBIONT carried a slightly distinct character, like veins and how they are different in nature.
The algorithmic surface textures were another big focus. They were carefully generated from studies of natural curves and growth patterns in biological organisms. This helped the body design feel both visually engaging and tactilely convincing, as if each SYMBIONT had its own natural skin.
Movement and lifelike behavior.
A huge part of my design effort went into mapping how SYMBIONTs move. I studied the ease and fluidity of human and animal motion—the subtle qualities of how limbs flex, how crawling or pulsing unfolds, and even how the rhythm of a heartbeat shifts across emotional states.
I translated these observations into the actuation system, so the SYMBIONTs’ legs bend, pulse, and crawl in ways that echo real-life movement. For instance, their heartbeat-inspired pulses are mapped against the variability of human heart rates—faster under excitement, slower in calm moments—so that each interaction carries an emotional undertone grounded in the rhythms of living beings.
What sparked the project.
The original spark came from my own heightened sensory sensitivity and my curiosity about how communication might extend beyond our current capabilities and apparatuses. I’ve always been fascinated by how different entities—humans, natural organisms, and systems—exchange signals and form communication.
SYMBIONT grew out of this fascination, evolving through an iterative prototyping process (HiPalm, EmoLink, OctoTouch, and finally SYMBIONT). At each stage, I explored how tactile cues like vibration, crawling, or pulsing could embody emotional meaning. I chose these movements based on the three metaphorical touch patterns in human-human communication. Ultimately, the project was named after symbiosis—a prolonged coexistence between organisms. Just as in nature, SYMBIONTs are designed to be companions that mediate connection without overpowering it.
So the project is both personal and conceptual: it reflects my own curiosity in studying nature and design based on that while also creating a new way to think about bioinspired, metaphor-driven tactile communication through soft robotics.