Photo by Blast Theory
Cat Royale
Led by the art studio Blast Theory and Prof. Steve Benford of the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham, the project explores artificial intelligence's trustworthiness in the context of caretaking. The artists developed a 'cat utopia', an environment designed to cater to every need of three cats who dwelled there six hours a day for two weeks, while a robot arm entertained them with toys and food treats, as an AI learnt and adapted the offerings to their preferences based on their responses. Videos of the installation are still being displayed in art galleries around the world to invite public reflection.
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Prof. Mancini collaborated with the project team to inform the design of the environment and the ethics of doing research with the cats. Together, we explored issues of trust and control when building worlds for humans, animals and robots, and epistemological and ethical issues influencing perceptions of animals' role in research.
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Visit the project's website for more information and lots go great videos of cats playing with a robot!
Further readings
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Benford, Steve; Barnard, Pepita; Sharples, Sarah; Webb, Helena; Mancini, Clara; Kucukyilmaz, Ayse; Castle Green, Simon; Schneiders, Eike; Ngo, Victor; Chamberlain, Alan; Fischer, Joel; Salimbeni, Guido; Tandavanitj, Nick; Adams, Matt and Row Farr, Ju (2025). Charting the Ecosystem of Trust in Cat Royale. Or what it takes to trust a robot to play with cats. In: The 17th International Conference on Social Robotics + AI (ICSR 2025), 10-12 Sep 2025, Naples, Italy.
Cao, Dingbang; Tandavanitj, Nick; Adams, Matt; Row Far, Ju; Schneiders, Eike; Salimbeni, Guido; Pound, Mike; Mancini, Clara and Benford, Steve (2025). Cat Royale: A Case Study of Artist-led AI Research. In: The Third UK AI Conference, 23-24 Jun 2025, Gibbs Building, London.
Adams, Matt; Tandavanitj, Nick; Benford, Steve; Kucukyilmaz, Ayse; Ngo, Victor; Castle Green, Simon; Salimbeni, Guido; Barnard, Pepita; Fischer, Joel; Chamberlain, Alan; Schneiders, Eike and Mancini, Clara (2025). Cat Royale: An Artistic Inquiry into Trust in Robots. In: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2025, 19-23 May 2025, Atlanta, USA.
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Benford, Steve; Mancini, Clara; Chamberlain, Alan; Schneiders, Eike; Castle-Green, Simon; Fischer, Joel; Kucukyilmaz, Ayse; Salimbeni, Guido; Ngo, Victor; Barnard, Pepita and Adams, Matt (2024).Charting Ethical Tensions in Multispecies Technology Research through Beneficiary-Epistemology Space. In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24), 11-16 May 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA, ACM.
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Schneiders, Eike; Benford, Steve; Chamberlain, Alan; Mancini, Clara; Castle-Green, Simon; Ngo, Victor; Row Farr, Ju; Adams, Matt; Tandavanitj, Nick and Fischer, Joel (2024). Designing Multispecies Worlds for Robots, Cats, and Humans. In: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), ACM, New York, NY, USA, article no. 593.
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Schneiders, Eike; Chamberlain, Alan; Fischer, Joel E.; Benford, Steve; Castle-Green, Simon; Ngo, Victor; Kucukyilmaz, Ayse; Barnard, Pepita; Row Farr, Ju; Adams, Matt; Tandavanitj, Nick; Devlin, Kate; Mancini, Clara and Mills, Daniel (2023). TAS for Cats: An Artist-led Exploration of Trustworthy Autonomous Systems for Companion Animals. In: Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Trustworthy Autonomous Systems, ACM.