Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel’s analog overhead projector animations were already used in 1944 to demonstrate how easy it is for the observer’s brain to associate emotional attachment to inanimate objects and how our human brain is hard wired for compassion.

Empathy Swarm will transplant this from a digital to a physical environment by creating a swarm of robots that as a whole can adapt its behavior and interacts with the observer’s emotional feedback.