Where control softens

This project explores how automated machines can be understood not only as powerful, efficient, and autonomous systems, but also as situated and relational entities. Beginning with everyday automated machines, such as domestic robot vacuum cleaners, the project challenges the idea of automation as seamless, invisible, and fully autonomous. In practice, machines hesitate, misjudge, stop, wait, and depend on human interpretation. This tension becomes more critical in remote operation, where operators are physically separated from machines and many sensory cues are lost. Developed in collaboration with Epiroc, the project focuses on the relationship between remote operators and automated machines in mining contexts. The final outcome is a set of physical interface prototypes that use resistance, vibration, haptic feedback, and temporal replay to explore how machines might express hesitation, material conditions, recent experience, and the need for human intervention. Rather than simply presenting information, they invite operators to perceive, interpret, and negotiate with the machine. The project proposes a different approach to automation design: one that moves beyond control and efficiency, and treats legibility, vulnerability, and felt presence as meaningful qualities in human-machine relationships.