“Alexitimia” is the manifestation of a deficit in emotional cognition. The terminology is a clinical construct that describes the behavior of someone who is mostly unaware of his feelings, or does not know what they signify, and hence, is not able to talk about their emotions or their emotional preferences.

Alexithymics beings are incapable of expressing mental conflicts verbally and therefore they express them through the body and its somatic functionality.

For this reason, Alexitimia is also the name of this “autonomous robotic agent” whose behavior is analogous to the process of sweating of the human skin. This alexithymic agent has a
very unusual and ambiguous behavior for a robot and, as a result, does not seem to be a powerful machine with equally powerful software housed in a mobile body able to act rationally on its perception of the world around it. On the contrary, Alexitimia is a robot constructed definitely without a clear function and utility, and consequently, clear motivations or goals to achieve. This autonomous robot was made to propose an ironic position different from the view of an agent as a “competent system of autonomy and determination”.
Created with an organic appearance made with soft and flexible materials, this robot cannot move around, it cannot see, cannot emit sounds, and also, it cannot detect voices; however, it can
interact with the spectators through its body. With the intention of showing a holistic approach to the hardware/software dichotomy; this robot, without any anthropomorphic (or robotic) appearance, interacts and communicates with the environment by only a tactile way of perception. Therefore, using it’s “artificial skin" as an interface, the corporeal scheme of this robot begins to sweat when somebody (a spectator) touches it.

Photo Credits: Fundación Telefónica, Argentina