All this month we are talking to Dr Heather Knight and Dr Piotr Mirowski every Wednesday Morning. This year they are hosting a brand new event in the heart of London – Robot Fringe Festival . It is set to take place on the 2nd July at Senate House, part of the University of London. The event is set to explore experimental, bold and creative ideas as part of the Internal Conference on Social Robotics ICSR+ART 2026. All this month we are talking to Heather and Piotr to find out all about it. This week we find out more about Robot Fringe Festival.
Robot Fringe is part of the International Conference on Social Robotics. Tell us about that for those who do not know what it is?
Piotr: It is an academic conference for researchers who care about how we (humans) interact with robots, and covers subjects from ethics to engineering. It will take place on 1-3 July in London, at Senate House at UCL. You can browse the program or register at https://icsr2026.uk/.
Heather you are organising Secondary Motion Fashion show at the conference what can you tell us about it?
Heather: This first-of-its-kind half-day workshop explores secondary motion—the delayed, reactive, physics-driven movement that follows a robot’s primary action—as a new form of robot fashion and expressive design. Rather than dressing robots in anthropomorphic clothing, participants create kinetic contraptions that flutter, bounce, sway, rattle, shimmer, or oscillate.
The motivation of workshop is to blend research and creativity to investigate:
How secondary motion can communicate attitude, personality, or intent? How kinetic contraptions can serve as rapid prototypes for expressive behaviors? How design and artistic practices (fashion, theatre, sculpture) can enrich social robotics?
We will look at the expressivity of robot motion, do some hands-on experimentation with designing contraptions for robots. We encourage collaboration between artists, roboticists, and industry and will prepare pieces for a public runway-style demonstration at the conference’s opening ceremony.
How does Robot Fringe tie in?
Heather: The robot fringe is a curated variety show, somewhat more in a vaudeville or experimental theatre style, whereas the Quadruped Fashion workshop intersects STYLE + FASHION MOTION + SCULPTURE, as participants will actively build contraptions and see what motion programming best shows them off. Definitely sister projects in the support for creative tech.
What can you tell us about the acts that are performing?
Robot Fringe will celebrate bold, experimental new works exploring human-robot relationships. We had many great submissions, with selection based on program length, variety and balance of performance methods, relevance to the theme of human-robot relationships in the context of a variety show, and novelty to the ICSR community. The program will include work by Ash Eliza Smith, Daniel Pillis, Daniel Simu, Dylan Cawthorne, Gunter Lösel, Hersch Nathan, Kate Ladenheim, Martine Mussels, Maleen Jayasuriya, Naomi Fitter, as well as some surprise host moments by Piotr and Heather.
Tell us about the location Senate House the location of the Robot Fringe?
Piotr: It is a majestic and really beautiful Art Deco venue in the centre of London, that could be a movie set.
What do you hope people take away from Robot Fringe?
Piotr: A passion for tinkering, making things, failing and trying again!
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