Apollo

Humanoid Robot

A unique UI/UX project, I led development of a motion language system for Apollo, a NASA-backed general-purpose humanoid robot available for sale in 2024.

Designed to work alongside humans in industries ranging from retail and hospitality to logistics and aerospace, Apollo will be a revolutionary step forward in practical general robotics.

Role: Motion Director
Agency: argodesign
Client: Apptronik

A set of guiding motion principals to inform all communication

Mid-design exploration

Some use cases

Utilizing user research, historical trends, and popular culture references, my team devised a set of minimal visual touchpoints applying motion to key communication and personality. Incorporating synchronous LED eyes, an E-ink mouth, and a touchscreen chest panel, the thoughtfully crafted set of animations allows for clear interactability under the widest range of conditions and distances:

↳ Mouth ⇢  60 feet
↳ Eyes ⇢  30 feet
↳ Chest ⇢  3 feet

The system and UI, like the chassis and shrouding ID, had to project a delicate balance of sophistication and utility where tiny variations, like mouth placement and expression speeds, could profoundly impact perception.

Because Apollo was in development during the discovery and design phases, I sat down with engineers to determine a concise set of likely interactions and built animations folding in the unified motion principles that could be referenced and applied downstream to most, if not all, eventualities.

Apollo, Communication (featureing me!)

Apollo, Productizing

Apollo, Relationships

Apollo, Everyday

Parsing out and explaining what’s important in Apollo's technology and design, this Freethink documentary does a good job contextualization and explaining Apptronik's differentiation in the market.

The design contribution from argodesign starts around the 8-minute mark, and my portion about motion design is around 13 minutes.