I did a talk about robots at Interesting 2009 on September 12 2009 [slideshare here for those of you who like that sort of thing]. Now, I don’t have any expertise in robots at all, but the premise at Interesting is that you talk about something that you find interesting (and that you hope others will find interesting too), but which isn’t to do with what you do for a living. No one likes a blatant plug. And I’m the first to admit that I’m anything but a robot expert – merely a passionate enthusiast.
I only had 5 mins at Interesting. Which isn’t that long. So there were quite a few robots I would have liked to include, but didn’t have time for. Hence here’s my opportunity to update the talk with the extended disco remix version, with extra bonus material of added robots:
I spent 5 minutes talking about why I think robots are ace.
Because in films they tend to be portrayed as evil androids – like False Maria in Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis, in which she wreaks havoc upon the city…
Or the Terminator, the unstoppable android assassin – although I think his current incarnation as governor of California is probably scarier…
Or the Cybermen – some of the Doctor’s most deadly enemies in Dr Who…
Or they tend to be portrayed as sweet figures of fun providing comic relief- like Johnny 5 in Short Circuit…
Or Wall E…
Or R2D2 & C3PO – they rock, but they are very much the comic relief in the Star Wars films…
Or Marvin the Paranoid Android, in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy…
But actually robots are full of win, and they’re ace and amazing and wonderful without having to be evil assassins or sweet but ineffectual comic relief. And here’s a few examples of how and why:
This is Tankpitstop, a Dutch robot which stops you having to get out of your car into the cold & get your hands smelling of petrol – the robot clocks the car when you arrived at the filling station, matches it to a database of fuel cap designs and fuel types, and away you go….
Robots FTW because…they can fill up our cars for us (helping us to become even lazier than we already are)
The Dustbot project was a 3 year initiative at the University of Pisa to experiment with new ways of managing urban waste.
They’re fitted with GPS navigation, a gyroscope, beacons and a multitude of sensors to keep them from running into humans (an excellent idea since they weigh in at 1.5 tons).
Robots FTW because…they can make our cities cleaner, more pleasant places to live
This is Gundam, from the TV series of the same name – he’s 18m high and weighs 35 tonnes.
Japan has long been obsessed with the idea of giant robots. They’re the stars of shows like Getter Robo. The original Transformer toys came from Japan, before Hasbro turned them into a global phenomenon
Patrick Galbraith, ethnographer at the University of Tokyo and author of The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan, says that “no series is more beloved” than Gundam.
“In Japan, they skipped all that negativity after the industrial revolution, and really, what they have is technology and mechanics as the hope for the future,”
In Gundam, you see a young man get on board a giant robot, he reads a tech manual and he says, ‘I can fly this thing and save the world’ – and in fact, he does.
I think that hopefulness is what the Japanese see in robots.”
The Gundam story is about a war between space colonies and Earth. It first launched as an animated TV series in 1979 – one set in what was called the “Universal Century,” in which human-controlled robots were used to protect their pilots against enemies.
This idea of machines being positive forces was in contrast to much of the Hollywood science fiction of the period – such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the ship’s computer tries to kill its pilot.
Galbraith reckons it was this positivity that had gripped the Japanese – in some cases, so much that they became “otaku”, or “obsessive geeks”:
Otaku people are people who have an ideal of the future, who have an ideal of technology that’s so strong and so important to them that they’ve moved far away from the bounds of reality.
This obsession with technology has meant the country is the ideal place to test new innovation – with people comfortable with it as part of their everyday lives. And meaning a visit to Japan can give an intriguing glimpse at the future for the rest of us…
Robots FTW because…they inspire us towards greater innovation and a more positive future
I love these firefighting robots.
Robot assistance is most often called upon in fires involving acetylene cylinders, which are used for welding.
These can explode long after a fire has been put out, putting firefighters at risk and leading them to set up a 200-metre cordon around the scene of a fire for as long as 24 hours. This can cause huge disruption to roads and railways passing through the exclusion zone.
Since starting trials with robots that can safely inspect and cool acetylene cylinders, the London Fire Brigade has cut the average time it took to clear the cordon around a fire involving the cylinders from 19 hours to 2 hours 15 mins.
You’ll notice that there are two robots and they’re a very good team – in this case Bison holds open the door so that Black Max can cool down the cylinders
They’re fitted with a thermal imaging camera so that fire crews can assess the temperature of acetylene cylinders without risking injury. They have sensors and grappling devices – they were built for war, and bomb disposal. And now the London Fire Brigade.
Robots FTW because…they save lives
Tweenbots was an art project by Kacie Kinzer examining the random kindness of strangers.
She designed these tiny smiling cardboard robots that rely on the help of pedestrians to get to their destination.
They roll at a constant speed, in a straight line and are dependent on humans to steer them in the right direction to reach their final location (which is printed on a flag attached to the robot’s body).
The results were pretty bonkers. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers.
Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal.
Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation.
One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
But of more interest to me was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy.
Tweenbots told the story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having desire to achieve a goal without the means to do so.
Robots FTW because…they bring out the best in people & remind us that society is fundamentally good. They help us learn about ourselves.
RIBA is a robot nurse who you’ll notice also resembles a friendly, smiley bear. RIBA, or Robot for Interactive Body Assistance, was developed by researchers at Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) to assist healthcare professionals by lifting patients in and out of their beds and wheelchairs, and on and off the toilet).
As well as multi-jointed arms fitted with tactile sensors (which yield slightly under pressure, much like human arms), its body is covered in a soft skin to protect patients when they’re being carried – and it can recognise faces and voices, as well as respond to spoken commands.
Japan is facing the challenges which an aging population will pose to its healthcare institutions, and is investing heavily in technology as one solution to this problem, with a hefty whack of both government and private research being undertaking to develop robots to work in the healthcare field.
Japanese researchers are racing against time to build robots smart enough to serve the needs of the elderly in a country in which 40% of the population will be over 65 by 2055. As Japan’s population grows older and its labour force shrinks, researchers say new types of robots will play a major role as there simply won’t be enough people to do these jobs. Isao Shimoyama, dean of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, says that “In the type of aging society that we foresee, the situation will likely get to the point where there will be little choice but to get some help from robots.”
The reason for the smiley bear appearance? The uncanny valley strikes again. The uncanny valley hypothesis, by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, posits that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act too human, it freaks us out:
Mori’s hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a “barely human” and “fully human” entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is “almost human” will seem overly “strange” to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathic response required for productive human-robot interaction.
Robots FTW because…they’ll support us in our old age
The Nissan Eporo (Episode Zero Robot) is a robot car which hints at the future of driving, and awesomely takes its inspiration from schools of fish. The Eporo produces zero emissions and is accident free thanks to obstacle detection that allows it to travel in groups (much like a school of fish). The Eporo can navigate like a school of fish do, using group behavior to collect and react to data being fed between the different vehicles. This means that cars can travel close together and at speed without fear of hitting each other and causing an accident:
Robots FTW because…they can prevent accidents in our increasingly congested roads, far better than any human can
And last, but not least, it’s time for the homebrewed robots. Lovingly crafted from paper and Arduino boards.
Like the Guardian robot. This friendly little fellow stands on your desk and monitors your Twitter feed for “happy” and “sad” posts by your friends on your Twitter feed. But unlike conventional alert systems, this robot encourages you to interact with the posts it finds.
For example, when it finds a “happy” post, the Guardian Robot raises its head and arm in triumph. It holds the pose until you give it a “high five” by pushing the switch in its raised hand. Once you do that, the robot pass the high five on to your buddy via a reply Tweet.
Likewise, when the Guardian Robot comes across a sad Tweet, it lowers its head in despair. You cheer it up by giving it a hug, which it will forward on with another reply Tweet.
Or the Mail-E, a servo-equipped paper robot that’s programed to check your inbox every few seconds and bust a move when a new message arrives. The videos are incredible. WANT.
Robots FTW because…you can craft your own delightful robotic chums to fulfil a functional need in an utterly charming way. And bring a smile to your face.
