Communicating with SanTO – the first Catholic robot

In the 1560s Philip II of Spain commissioned the realisation of a “mechanical monk”, a small humanoid automaton with the ability to move and walk. Centuries later, we present a Catholic humanoid robot. With the appearance of a statue of a saint and some interactive features, it is designed for Christian Catholic users for a variety of purposes. Its creation offers new insights on the concept of sacredness applied to a robot and the role of automation in religion. In this paper we present its concept, its functioning, and a preliminary test. A dialogue system, integrated within the multimodal communication consisting of vision, touch, voice and lights, drives the interaction with the users. We collected the first responses, particularly focused on the impression of sacredness of the robot, during an experiment that took place in a church in Peru.