Dreams of a Gastro Automaton

Sometimes necessity ISN’T the mother of invention. Case in point: Humanity’s long-standing desire to create machines that poop. In this episode of Invention, Robert and Joe discuss Vaucanson’s digesting duck and modern takes on the technology. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm
Joe McCormick, and I want to start by by by
bringing everybody's mind back to um a famous quote from Plato. Okay,
this is from Plato's republic booked book two. Uh. And

(00:24):
this is a particular to the Joett translation. Uh. Quote,
then I said, let us begin and create an idea,
a state, and yet the true creator is necessity, who
is the mother of our invention? And then um Joett
also applied a more direct translation, which maybe quote our
need will be the real creator. Oh so this is

(00:47):
the origin of that phrase, necessity is the mother of
invention exactly, which it sometimes is. But as we've discussed
plenty of times on the show before, there are a
lot of mothers of invention, and many of them are
not quite necessity. Yeah. A lot of the show, as
we discussed on the show, our devices and concepts that
attempt to solve basic problems and the lives of the
humans that created them. I think that is a very

(01:07):
common thing to encounter. Uh and uh. But the same
cannot be said for today's invention. Not exactly, because today
we're discussing humanities centuries spanning quest to create a robot
that eats and poops. And I would say it's not
so much as a need as it is a want,

(01:27):
you know. Um, But it is interesting when you start
breaking it down, like, why if we didn't need, if
there wasn't a definite need, say in the ancient world
or or even in recent centuries, to have a robot
that could eat a sandwich and then produce that sandwich
to poop, then why did we seemingly want it? And

(01:47):
and I and I and I do say that, you know,
we did seemingly wanted. Individuals worked at this problem to
varying degrees, either you know, dreaming it up, creating machines
that at least produced the uh, you know the effects
of this process, and then later on even you know,
in recent years, have reached the point where we actually

(02:07):
have machines capable of carrying this out, which we'll get
to towards the end of the episode. Yeah, but one
thing to think about is that a machine that poops, say,
a pooping robot, is not just something that's for laughs.
It actually does play, say, an intellectually serious role in history,
and it engages with ideas that people have been pushing

(02:29):
back and forth on for hundreds of years. And I'd
say chiefly one of those ideas is the question of
what makes something alive? And we'll revisit that throughout the episode. Yeah,
because you know, ultimately it comes down to this this
very old quest, you know, this very old question. Can
the inventor and when there with their secular ingenuity, can

(02:52):
they rival the work of the gods? Can they create
a machine that moves like a human being, that thinks
like a human being, or even eats and oops like
a human being. And this is there in some of
the older myths about crafts people and inventors, like you know,
the myth of Dadalus. One of the stories told about Dadalus.
I think this also appears in a in a dialogue

(03:12):
written by Plato, is the idea that Dadalus created these
statues and because he was such a good craftsman, and
because they were so like lifelike, they came to life.
There is embedded in that almost like an idea that,
you know, be careful because if you make a representation
of a living form that's close enough to the real thing,

(03:33):
it will actually just spontaneously come alive and walk out
of your workshop, all right, And I mean in in
a non literal way like that, that is true, Like
the artificiality of the things we create and the likeness
of human being can be can be very powerful, continues
to be even more powerful given our abilities with the
you know, say, digital media, we can create something that

(03:55):
seems human and then if we believe in it enough,
it almost makes it real. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, so
it's one thing to create a work of art. I
mean I think that's ultimately. Even though deadalust is in
some ways considered to be like an inventor with the
wings and stuff. Uh, the statues that he created, I
think are generally thought of as works of art. Right.
The idea was that they were so artistically adept, that

(04:18):
they were so realistic in their depiction of the human form,
there was danger of them coming alive and walking away.
But there are also myths of actual like machines that
that mimic human or lifelike forms in some way. Yeah, ultimately,
way too many for us to to share on the
show today, but just a few examples that that come

(04:38):
to mind. There's, of course, Alberta's Magnus Um, you know,
who lived nine through twelve eighty um, who was also
known as a doctor Universalis and doctor expertus uh and
and later he was made a saint. But he was
said to have an android to have this again, this
thing that you know deta else are kind of vague,

(05:00):
but it sounds like something in the likeness of a
human that had some sort of mechanism to its movement
that that allowed it to lean into this lifelike nature.
You know. I think we can safely dismiss the idea
that he had a walking, talking robot in his in
his laboratory or at the end that was created via

(05:23):
technology or magic, because there are a lot of stories
about Magnus. But I would say it's not impossible that
some of these more ancient figures or even medieval figures,
had had some kind of automata that had limited functionality,
in that they might have had internal gears and clockwork
mechanisms that by you know, turning a crank or by

(05:44):
operating bellows or somehow putting energy into the system would
allow it to enact movements through the you know, the
robotic articulation kind of things. That could be somewhat life like,
probably wouldn't be walking around talking, but might you know,
you might have an automaton in the ancient world that
has gears inside that allow it to move its arms
and stuff. Right, we we did a whole episode of

(06:05):
stuff to bling your mind on Talos, the mythical automaton.
It would stalk the shores and throw boulders at robots
created by Harvestus that would throw boulders at ships, um
and and certainly this creature never this thing never walked
the earth, but you can imagine where it might. It
was either inspired by some of the manufacturing techniques that

(06:29):
were employed to create similar statues, or it was based
in some way on you know, mild automatons that were
demonstrated by proficient individuals. And there were some strikingly proficient
machines in the ancient world. I mean, we can't lose
sight of that. Like the anti Cithero mechanism is an
astronomical calculator. It's essentially a an analog computer that is

(06:55):
made by different sized gears that fit together. That was
from you know, I think it was the second or
third century BC or something like that. Uh, that is
discovered in a shipwreck in the Mediterranean. This was, you know,
a really complex clockwork mechanism that calculated the positions of
objects in the sky. And if the ancients could build
stuff like that, it's not at all inconceivable that they

(07:16):
could build basic automata in human like forms that could
you know, move their body parts and stuff. A couple
of other examples of of older tales of such creations.
King Solomon is said in some accounts to have had
had a throne with mechanical animals on it. Oh, is
that where the Marilyn Manson title comes from? What dope throne?

(07:37):
No dope throw and that's electrical straight, no mechanical animals.
Isn't that a? Oh? Yeah, I guess it is? Sorry
getting my my albums confused their um In either case,
I don't think either band actually had a at a
throne on par with King Solomon's. Uh, there's another there's
actually um an individual by the name of Zoe Muwang

(08:01):
fifth centuries of dynasty ruler who is said to have
had a mechanical engineer. And I've also read similar stories
of Luban from the same time period. Luban, of course,
would also also deified as a know, a god of
of engineering, carpentry, etcetera. But in a lot of these
affect these older accounts, you know, myth mingles with history, Um,

(08:25):
A great deal becomes obviously exaggerated. Um. And Albertus Magnus,
for all his interests, was not an actual magician. And
it seems an essential truth that throughout human history, engineers, inventors, artists,
and technicians have experimented with automata. You know, we're driven
to reproduce images of the human form, and then we
take it a step beyond an attempt to bring them

(08:46):
to life. And this is of course part and parcelto
to one of humanity's oldest storytelling mediums, puppetry. Oh yeah,
I mean I hadn't thought about it like that. But
a puppet, in a way is an extremely crude automaton.
It is a figure that is powered by some kind
of external force applied. It removed through the strings or whatever,

(09:08):
through wires, or even just directly with the human hands. Uh.
You know, and sometimes there's not even this removal. But
but we were bringing life to the inanimate and making
the inanimate animate. Uh. And and this goes back you know,
at least four thousand years through human history. But it's
impossible really to say when puppetry really began, because ultimately

(09:29):
any piece of witter stone transformed into into the likeness
of a human or an animal could be quote unquote
brought to life through minor or even crude puppetry. Yeah,
and I guess in some ways, it's like the advancement
of the of the automaton. How advanced we think it
is and how we react to it is based on

(09:49):
how well hidden the deliveries of the power operations of
its body parts are, right, like how well hidden the
mechanisms are, and how much it just looks like it
op rates on its own force from the inside. Right.
But but yes, and no, though right, because um, from
as far as puppetry is concerned, puppetry can still be

(10:10):
very convincing when you have very visible puppeteers. I mean,
it's still a style that's employed uh today, and you
can still um, you know, part of it is the
suspension of disbelief. But the puppetry, the puppet puppet can
still become real. But yeah, to whatever degree you hide that,
to whatever degree, then it becomes uh seemingly or even
purely mechanical with the humans standing off to the side.

(10:34):
You know, that can only you know, enhance the effect.
But but just in terms of of picking up a
likeness of a being or a creature and then moving
it and making it seem like it's alive, I mean
you can. You can look at some of the oldest
evidence we have of such likenesses, such as the venus
of Whole Fells from what four between forty thousand and

(10:57):
thirty five thousand years ago. Oh, there's evidence that this
was a puppet. No, no, there's no evidence that I've
seen it was a puppet. It's it's like if you
have something like this, so you have something like the
likeness of the lion man that we discussed loan loan
mention from stuff to blow your mind. It's it's one.
It really makes me think to imagine people picking this

(11:17):
up and brandishing it for the first time, and you know,
really and and and this combination of forms making their
minds work and summoning new ideas about what's what's possible
and and how it relates to the human condition. But
then all one has to do then is to to
move the lion man around a little bit. Well, yeah,

(11:39):
and it comes to life in some level, and then
how does that change the message? Yeah, yeah, So you
can think about the different um levels of animation and
articulation within representational art throughout history. So first you might
have had cave paintings that are fixed on a wall
and don't move. And then you might have had something
like the Venus or like the Lowan Menh which is
a standalone gurine that you could meet's stiff and ridge

(12:02):
it on its own, but you can move it around
with your hand like kids do with their toys, you know,
they act out little scenes. And then beyond that you
can have articulated figurines with independently moving body parts. Of course,
that's like the next step. And then the thing beyond that,
of course, would be to make those body parts move
at a distance or with some kind of hidden power
without you having to pose them with your fingers. Absolutely,

(12:23):
So we could go on for quite some time talking
about like the history of creating these likenesses and do
varying degrees that we bring them to life, sometimes with
things that don't even physically interact with them in a
traditional sense, such as lighting effects, the effects of candle
or firelight on on statues and whatnot. But ultimately we
want to fast forward a bit. We want to go

(12:46):
all the way up into the eighteenth century, eighteenth century Europe.
We want to talk about the work of Jacques devoca Saw. Yes,
I think we should take a quick break and then
when we come back we can dive further in. Alright,
we're back, and uh, you know, I hope you stuck
with us, because now we're going to get into the

(13:09):
story of the Defecating Duck. Right, So this is the
work of Jacques Devocasson, who was a French automaton maker
who lives seventeen o nine to seventeen eighty two. And
Robert we both read an excellent essay about Vocasson and
some some of his contemporaries called the Defecating Duck or
the Ambiguous Origin Origins of Artificial Life, and this was

(13:32):
published in Critical Inquiry in two thousand three, written by
Jessica Riskin, who is a professor of history at Stanford
and she's written extensively about the historical scientific debate about
what makes something alive, including in a book called The
Restless Clock, which I was reading about and reading some passages,
from which is University of Chicago, Press, sixteen. But for Riskin,

(13:55):
Vocason is a so as a maker of automata, he
plays an important role in the history of this debate
about what it is that makes living things special, what
makes something alive? And this historical conflict has been between
people who on one side thought living things were sort
of passive machines that were designed to work a certain

(14:19):
way and could be understood by their movements pretty much
entirely except for the fact that they had been you know,
they might have like a divine spark or an animating
life essence. Uh, and that this uh, this point of
view is typified by Descartes, right, who famously thought that
animals were machines. Yeah. If you're approaching everything from a
very biomechanical standpoint like this, then uh, it seems completely

(14:41):
possible to reverse engineer uh, the animal, Yeah, exactly. And
then on the other hand, you've got people like Leibnitz
who thought that animals were what Leibnitz called organisms the
you know, that was a word of his coinage, meaning
self organizing, self changing machines. So we might still think
of them in term of machinery, but having all of

(15:02):
these these self actualizing potentials and irreducible parts. And so
the one interesting thing that risk And points out is
that the idea of living things as clockwork machines was
actually considered relatively acceptable theologically at the time. And say,
you know, uh, eighteenth century Christian Europe. It's sort of
fit with the idea somewhat in vogue at the time

(15:23):
of God as an ultimate watchmaker who fashioned an exquisite
clockwork universe by ingenious design and set it going. Oh yeah,
once again, using like technology being the metaphor we use
to then reinterpret our our myths and our legends and
our religions. Yeah. But Jacques de vocus On, so he's
he's in this world, right, Yeah, yeah, So focus On

(15:46):
lived in a time of clockwork wonders and rapidly advancing technology.
He was the tenth son of a glove maker, and
so you know, as one might expect, he grew up
poor but around a lot of gloves, lot of gloves,
and he's tenth in line to you know, to work
the shop. But he dreamt of becoming a clockmaker, and
he was fortunate enough to study under the Jesuits and

(16:08):
coupled his clockwork ambitions with these new mysteries that came
into his life, the mysteries of religion and this evolving
understanding of health and human anatomy that is inevitably based
in this kind of biomechanical vision of what life is. Okay,
so he's got some knowledge of like clockwork and gears
and how you know, all these different little parts can

(16:29):
fit together to move things at a distance and channel
power in different directions. Right, So he ends up creating
a number of different automata and uh, and he comes
to excel in the creation of what we're known at
the time as philosophical toys. These were amusements, you know,
mechanical clockwork amusements. They were also supposed to make you think,

(16:49):
like the Billy bigmouth bass. Well, it sings, but it
also makes you think, well, like what if a fish
could sing? I'm not sure what a really good example
I guess this should he take me to the river.
Don't even know if we have purely philosophical toys anymore.
Perhaps some more toy collectors out there listening can can
chime in. But I mean the idea is that this
would be a device that was brought out and demonstrated. Uh,

(17:13):
you would even pay to see it. You know, you
would go to see this Mechanici's philosophical toy in action,
and you would marvel at what seemed was possible with
the technology. And then ideally this would lead to a
great deal of thought and introspection on what it is
telling you about the natural world, about the human condition, etcetera. Really,

(17:34):
in a way, it's like in a pre motion picture age. Uh,
you know, what what kind of of mechanical object could
convey all the feelings you end up feeling from stay
watching Blade Runner. I do think there's some things kind
of like philosophical toys today. I think of machines. I
can't remember where I saw this, but you know, there's
like the the type of toy that is a an

(17:56):
electronic machine that has an it's a box with an
open button in a close button, and if you press
the open button, it opens and a little hand comes
out of the box and presses the clothes button and
goes back inside and it closes up. It just kind
of a philosophical toy. It's like it's amusing for a moment,
but it also maybe asks you. Maybe it causes you
to ask questions about like what what is the role

(18:18):
of a machine? Does this? Does this machine do something? Yeah,
And there are also various like certainly not mechanical objects,
but various like puzzle box scenarios that because I want
to think, I don't know what the name for this is.
But the little like the little folding boxes that just
keep folding back. Um, I'm not sure which you mean. Generally,

(18:38):
you'll you'll find them with with images on the sides
of them, and you kind of open them up and
then you open them up a second way. And I mean,
it all makes sense. You can one could certainly describe
it and plan it out, uh, you know, geometrically, But um,
I when I encounter them, I'm still like caught up
in the illusion of the thing, Like it seems like
there's some sort of weird infinity going on with it.

(18:58):
I don't think I'm familiar with what you're talking about.
I gotta have these. I'll have to bring one in.
Like I said, maybe there's a there's a more descriptive
term for them, I'm sure, but but basically just little
gadgets where it's not immediately clear exactly how it's functioning,
I mean to a certain extent of Rubik's cube. Is
this right? Um? If you don't know the sort of
the secret of the Rubik's cube and you encounter somebody

(19:22):
who can quickly solve one and you cannot, it's it's astounding,
like how is that working? How? How are these things
even moving around? Uh? And of course this to come
back around to, you know, the idea of puzzle boxes,
I mean reminded of course of the lament configurations, which
well it leave in the lore of the hell Raiser movies.

(19:44):
It emerges from this same time period, the same this
time period of clockwork wonders. Yeah, the Marshawn configuration or whatever, No,
the limitation, the Marshawn boxes there, whatever it is. Yeah,
but it does ask you questions. It asks you the question, really,
is the difference between pleasure and pain? Are you know,
pleasure and pain indivisible? So? But to bring things back

(20:07):
to the real world here, um, to focus on, to
focus on uh, he built a pair of android waiters
that served dinner and cleared a table. He also created
a mechanical flute player that could play four play twelve
different melodies. And that's more impressive than it seems because this, uh,
the flute player that he built a risk and writes
about this, it actually played the flute. I mean like

(20:29):
it blew into the flute and did the finger motions
on on a real flute. So that that's I don't know,
more impressive than just like a music box that happens
to be holding a flute. It was a machine that
actually blows in and and plays the instrument. Yeah, and
then ultimately, this is also a page from the history
of self playing instruments, which we alluded to a little
bit in our episode on the saxophone. But I think

(20:51):
it is the sort of thing we could easily do
a whole episode on in the future, instruments that play
themselves or uh, robots that play the instrument. What's the
difference between to ultimately, Yeah, that's a good point. But
so this gets us up to the seventeen thirties with
focus on in which he achieves his true masterpiece, which
is what the pooping duck. Of course, the pooping duck

(21:12):
Linard de Gerratur, as Gabby Wood writes in Living Dolls,
A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. Uh,
this was a gold plated copper duck that could quack, drink,
raise up on its legs, and most famously of all,
it would eat grain and then it would poop. Yes,
so you would like get a piece of corn in

(21:32):
your hand and feed it to the duck, and it
would take it in its mouth, and then there would
be a pause for a moment, and then the duck
would poop something that looks convincingly like real duck poop. Right,
And the way it was related to everyone is that
the grain was passing through tubes to a chemical filled
stomach and then through the duck's bowels. It's anus and

(21:54):
mechanical sphincter um. However, according to to Reskin, the duck
didn't actually really convert food into poop, no, sad to say.
What it did was it just collected the grain in
one tube and pushed out real excrement from a different one.
So ultimately it's just it's another illusion. It's a mechanical trick.
It's uh. It has far more in common with the

(22:16):
Roman puppet god Glicon than it does with you know,
the the the mythical wonders of Datalus. That's right. So
it was a trick it wasn't actually performing biological digestion
of food stuffs and and excreting. But I don't think
that means that this historical object is uninteresting and more
that it's completely a fraud. I mean again, it was

(22:39):
presented as entertainments, presented the philosophical toy, so uh, part
of it is like what does the machine appear to
do and what does that make you think about the
actual biological act exactly? Yeah, risk and talks about how
it raises these questions. We'll get back to that in
a minute. But I thought it was interesting this stuff
you came up with about why why Vocasan might have

(23:00):
been drawn to this project of a duck that poops. Yeah,
this was brought up by by Gabby wood Um about
how you know, it's suggest you know, looking at why
a man of of of of his genius of Wisconsin
Ginius was so enthralled by a mechanical duck that could defecate, right, Uh,
you know, in addition to proving both popular and lucrative,
so it apparently ended up scoring him a gig designing

(23:23):
looms for the King of France. It did that, but
also it's just sold it like it was it was
gangbusters like it made money. This was people were lining
up to see the direct the duck poop. People would
pay to get in to see the display was the
pooping duck in the middle, and it had a flute
player on one side and a the the automatic flute
player you know, the automata h and another type of

(23:45):
instrument player on the other side. So you got two
automatic instrument players on either side and the duck pooping
in the middle. And risk in relates that people would
pay like I don't remember exactly what the sum was,
but she said it was like the sum to get
in was about a normal work ker's week's worth of
wages to get in to see this. But as for
but there seems to be another layer here, and this

(24:06):
is this is what Wood has to say. Quote focus on.
It must be said. Was a man much preoccupied by
the state of his body. He was plagued by an
illness that had prevented him from eating. He suffered from
a fistula of the anus. The mechanicians particular mention of
the bowels anus and sphincter of the duck. Parts audiences
may have preferred to imagine for themselves might be seen

(24:28):
as a reflection of his own personal preoccupations. Wow, huh, Yeah,
because I mean, ultimately, what is the creation of an
automaton but an attempt to understand biology enough to replicate
its miracles. And of course even today we're not there yet.
The human body continually presents new puzzles and problems, big
and small, annoying and life threatening, as if to remind

(24:51):
us that we really don't have a perfect understanding or
a perfect power over our physical bodies. Yeah, and this
whole thing about the way a tamata that tried to
resemble living beings, You know that there are all these
stories of creatures like this. There, of course lots of
automaton automata modeled on humans, and then there are automata

(25:12):
modeled on animals like ducks and swans and pigs and
wolves and all these things from the time. Um, and
that what they did was in trying to create these
early robotic versions of the animals, they showed you what
are the hard parts in making an animal work? So
you could recreate movement. You know, you could use gears

(25:32):
and little levers and stuff like that to make the
legs move around and make the wings flap and all that,
but you couldn't get it to do certain other things.
You couldn't get it to respond to certain kinds of stimuli.
You know, you couldn't get like an automatic dog to
respond to commands or something. And you couldn't, of course
get it to digest and poop. And then I want

(25:55):
to read a passage from riskins essay quote. The defecating
duck and its companions commanded such attention at such a
moment because they dramatized two contradictory claims at once, that
living creatures were essentially machines, and that living creatures were
the antithesis of machines. It's masterful incoherence allowed the duck

(26:17):
to instigate a discussion that's continuing nearly three centuries later.
Well that that, in a way, it's the it's the
sign of a great work of our right and summon
such cognitive dissidence in the mind where it's like what
I'm seeing is possible and impossible at the same time. Yeah,
it's it's both showing like, wow, you can create a
mechanical duck. This convincing uh, And of course it was,

(26:37):
you know, there's a lot that went into it. The
ducks sat on top of this giant cabinet that had
these big rollers and gears underneath that powered its movements. Uh.
And so a lot went into this, but he did
manage to create a duck that would flap its wings
and do all the stuff that amazed people. But it
was also partially a fraud. And both of these facts
at the same time, about what it could do and

(26:59):
what it couldn't do, both seemed significant and indicating an
opposite directions about what life was. Was it essentially mechanical
or not? And uh. Another thing I came across in
risk In that I just wanted to read because I
thought it was really interesting was that Edgar Allan Poe
reacted to the defecating duck. Um. Uh. So Edgar Allan

(27:19):
Poe had thoughts on the duck and on other automata,
including Charles Babbage's difference engine, which was an early mechanical calculator. So,
to read from risk In quote in eighteen thirty six,
Edgar Allan Poe wrote admiringly of Voca Son's duck and
then used it to examine the plausibility of Kimperland's chess player.
And that's of course, the famous mechanical turk chess player

(27:41):
that would uh, that would it was? It was an
automaton that was like a dude in a turban who
would play chess against people. Uh. And that also turned
out to be a fraud, like the duck, because it
was supposed to be just a machine, but it actually
had real chess players inside controlling its movements. And so
to pick up in risk and talk about it, girl
and Poe uh the Kimberland's chess player, and of the

(28:03):
other automaton then in the news Babbage's didn't difference engine.
If the duck was ingenious, he wondered, quote, what shall
we think of the engine of wood and metal which
can compute astronomical and navigation tables? He decided he did
believe in the calculating engine, because arithmetic, like digestion and
flute playing, was quote finite and determinate. However, he did

(28:26):
not believe in the chess playing automaton because he said
chess was an uncertain process. Looking over the history of
automatas since vocasan Poe tried to define a criterion of possibility,
only determinate processes, he decided could be mechanized, and so
this is kind of weird in multiple ways. Number One,
he's he's Poe is partially right and partially wrong. He

(28:50):
thinks the chess player is a fraud, which he was
correct about, but he thinks the duck is real, that
it was actually digesting, which of course he's also wrong about.
But he actually of course says, well, yeah, you know,
you could create an automatic adding machine. It seems to
be the distinction he's making is that like a thing
can't be automated if it has to respond continuously to

(29:13):
stimuli from its environment, um and a risk. In actually
writes that many thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century
thought this way about the difference between machines and living things.
Living things react to their environment, whereas machines do not.
Machines are are sort of designed top down, and they're
set going from the beginning, and they only execute their

(29:34):
preprogrammed behaviors. And this is funny to us because of
course we're constantly surrounded by machines that continually respond to
ongoing inputs. Right. But then of course this is this
is the the one of the big challenges and continuing challenges,
and in robotics is like, it's what it's It's been
one thing to create an automated machine or a robot
that performs, say a dangerous but repetitive manufacturing task like

(29:59):
welding up particular part if you keep it in a
dark room away from people, um, except when it needs
to be serviced. Obviously, it's another scenario entirely. To have
that machine work alongside a human It's another, uh situation entirely.
Then on top of that, to imagine this machine going
out to someone's house and working on a car there

(30:20):
in their environment. Yeah. Uh, you know, likewise, the idea
of a machine like living in your home, learning about
your environment and learning about your activities. Uh yeah, So
I guess that's a good point. So I think Poe
is obviously wrong that living things are responsive in a
in an indeterminate way and machines aren't. But then again,
there are limitations to the way that machines are responsive. Um.

(30:43):
And this also actually is funny you mentioned industrial robots
because this also you mentioned that this got focus on
the duck got focus on a job re engineering the
looms of France from the King of France. Yeah, he
did go on to play an important role in attempts
to automate some parts of the French textile industry. And
this is an interesting question because coming up with automata

(31:06):
like making a duck that poops or or that pretends
to poop, and making human that tries to play the
flute and all this. These experiments, in these philosophical toys
and curiosities, are actually ways of investigating what parts of
a process can be automated and what actually can't and
has to be done by a human. So like, you

(31:28):
can make an automaton that pretends to play chess, but
you can't actually make an auto automaton in the you know,
eighteenth century that knows what move to make in the game,
and so and so. Figuring out stuff like this is
crucial in automating factories. Like focus on figured out, yeah, okay,
you can make a machine that does this part of

(31:49):
the weaving process. You don't actually need a human for that,
but you still do need a human for this other
thing that's impossible to automate. Right in the same scenario
continues to happen in manufacturing. You know, looking at at
a given manufacturing process and saying, okay, what are the
parts that a machine can do well. Which are the
parts that where a human needs to be there to excel?
What are the the areas where they can potentially work

(32:11):
along beside each other using what you know, sometimes referred
to as a cobot as opposed to a ropot um. Yeah,
I mean, we're we're still fine tuning this process as
the technology evolves. Yeah, exactly. Like one great example of
one of these things that Focus Song found he could
not automate when he was taking over the silk production,

(32:31):
was this process of I guess it's getting the silk
out of the worms, the initial you know, production of
the silk thread. I mean, I think it's still kind
of very similar. With a lot of textile related issues
are reportedly more difficult to to automate. I've heard some
more things about aspects of of like the like the

(32:53):
cardboard and paper industry. UM, and every industry is going
to have like different areas where machines can deaf really excel,
where they can be helpful, and where still the role
of human human labor and human minds are essential to
the process. And that's not even getting into the overall
u UM you know, supply chain issue. Because the factory,

(33:16):
of course, is just one part of of the manufacturing world.
You have to get raw materials to the factory or
semiraw materials to the factory. You've got to get the
finished product out, uh, you know, along the line and
moving towards stores and uh and uh you know places
of sale and uh and there's a whole I mean,
they're some of that can be automated these days. We're

(33:37):
looking at a very near future where some people hope
to see the transport automated, where you have self driving
trucks doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. But
you know, it's we're still continuing to figure out how
to put that all together. But will they ever fully
automate human defecation? Can a robot ever do all of

(33:58):
our pooping for us? Um? Can robots do pooping for us?
I don't know about that. That's that's maybe that's maybe
a long ways off. What about can they create our
fat burgs for us? I'm sure they could. Well, let's
just say that the age of actual pooping robots uh
is here, and it has been here. And we're going
to discuss more about that when we come back when

(34:19):
we break all right, we're back. So we've been talking
about Jacques Devocason and the digesting duck, and so we've
been talking about some of the implications of the early
attempts to create automata that would do lifelike processes like

(34:40):
digestion and early types of intelligence as as purported to
be realized by automata but maybe not actually realized. But
now what this duck claimed to do, we do have
some machines that can get into that territory digesting and pooping. Right, Yeah,
we've remained fascinated with this, and I think a large
part of it is that I ggestion is is unavoidable.

(35:02):
It's an essential part of what we do. Is we've
discussed and stuff to blow your mind, you know, it's
it's an amazing process and it's a it's an essential
aspect of who and what we are. Each of us
is essentially a giant earthworm, a tract that runs from
our mouth to our anus that breaks down organic matter
into a form that allows the removal of crucial nutrients
and everything else, you know, arms legs, human culture. It's

(35:25):
just an evolved flourish to enable this key function. Really, well,
what we just some feathers on the digestive track exactly.
So you know what, we might not want to think
of ourselves like this. We may wish to focus on
the more refined and less biological aspects of humanity. It
is the core of what we are. And if you
truly want to engage in the work of a creator
or a creatrix deity, then you better be able to

(35:46):
create a digestive system. And you know, it's ultimately a
crazy task because digestion does so much. You know, it's
it's a disassembly line of amazingly refined biology depending on
physical systems we can't yet equal. Um, you know, just
talking about like the fine motor movements that are involved
in in moving matter through our intestines for yeah, like

(36:10):
to create that mechanically or you know, or semi mechanically
is daunting. Um. On top of this, nerve impulses are
essential to the whole thing. I mean, there's there's communication
going on through throughout your digestive system, and then there's
all the chemical and microbial aspects of the process. So
it's not it's obviously it's not just this mechanical or

(36:31):
biomechanical process of digestion. Uh, you know, our the their
chemicals involved, there are microbial inhabitants are involved in the process,
and then the end result needs to be energy, you know,
for the machine, uh, you know, to to really digest
it has to be able to draw energy out of it,
usable energy out of the process. Otherwise is it really

(36:55):
better than the duck? Now that is a philosophical toy.
It makes you ask that question. Is just turning food
into poop but not getting any energy out of it
necessarily a lesser scientific accomplishment than actually drawing usable energy
from it. Well we'll get back to that for sure,
but but let's start with something else. Let's start with
taste for example. Okay, I mean taste is a vital

(37:16):
aspect of digestion. Yes, I mean, if you stop and
think about it for a second, it is gustatory perception.
And granted, the human condition complicates everything, and it certainly
complicates taste, but it's essentially they're along with smell to
help us evaluate what we're considering digesting. Yeah, I mean
a taste and smell or or chemo sensitive or chemo

(37:38):
receptor senses. You know, there are chemistry set of the body. Yeah,
and so here's an area though where there's there's long
been a necessity, uh, you could say, for a machine
that can taste food. I mean, kings, queens and other
powerful individuals have long needed a way to determine if
food and drink might be poisoned before they consume it.

(37:59):
That's where the goblets of certain materials come in, right, Yeah,
we talked about this and stuff to aboil your mind,
say goblets made from rhino horn that seeming depending on
who you're talking to, seems like they may have um
reacted to certain poisons like frost up in the presence
of certain chemicals and therefore might have worked, but they'd

(38:20):
certainly I think be partially dissolved by like a strong alkaline. Yeah.
And uh, and then on top of that, there's sort
of like magical ideas associated with it, And certainly they
were an anti poison magics employed throughout history. But one
of the best ways to deal with it was always
and still to a large extent still is to just
have somebody else taste your food for you, taste your

(38:41):
wine for you, somebody expendable. Yeah, and if they don't
die or get get ill, then you know that it's
probably okay. Um, Jeffrey ate the wings and looks like
we're good to go. And Uh, one of the crazy
things is that, yeah, this is still very much something
that is used in the world. In fact, yeah, there
are still food tasted So I was reading an interesting

(39:03):
Snoops article about this, and they pointed out that the
White House the apparently still uses food tasters, or at
least there's definite proof that they use them. Under President
Barack Obama, there were several incidents. Uh, that's definitely stated
or supported the fact that he used one, both domestically

(39:23):
and abroad, like for instance, not being able to participate
in a meal because the food tester wasn't there. Uh,
that's sort of thing. Um. This of course raises a
question does the current US president use the food taster?
And I've seen I was looking around trying to find
any confirmation. There are a lot of articles about concerned
with what sorts of foods the current president eats, but

(39:46):
I saw no discussion of whether he employed or that
the Secret Service employed and a food taster. And how
does that change if you're not talking about food prepared
on the premises by a chef or whatever. But maybe
imagine a president we're eating a big mac that was
procured from a McDonald's franchise location, were brought in in

(40:06):
a bucket of KFC. Yeah, um, yeah, I don't know.
I couldn't see any sources on that, but it seems
like if it were, if we're definitely say a secret
service uh standard during the previous presidency, it stands to
reason that it may still be a practice today. Uh
and understandably so um uh. One wonders though, if, if,

(40:29):
if one can really roll with that much KFC. I
don't know, but at any rate, it is interesting to
you know, to drive home that you know it is advanced.
Is the technology may have gotten Um, you know, we're
still not to the point where we're going to send
the human food tasters home when we're put putting you know,
high profile lives on the line. This seems wrong, Like

(40:50):
I mean, I understand the kings and queens of yester centuries,
uh saying Okay, here's Jeffrey, the expendable food taster. It
doesn't matter if he'd eyes, you know, he can taste
it and make sure there's no poison. That that seems
wrong today. Should shouldn't we have a machine that can
test for poison without having to subject a real human

(41:11):
being to the potential dangers of poisoning. Well, we have
technologies um that have that have that have been in
in the work. So it was twelve years ago that
an electro mechanical sum elier was debuted in Japan and
it made headlines for identifying human flesh is bacon for instance.
UM And of course it looked kind of like you know,
you would imagine a cute um like anime robot looking,

(41:36):
but it was the work of any C System Technologies
and my university, and it was designed to deal explicitly
with cheese and wine. But the really cool thing about
him is that, you know, is that we had There
are other technologies that can test food that can see,
you know, what were the contents, but they generally involved
destroying the food, which I guess is kind of what

(41:57):
a food taster does. They have to at least take
a bite out of that presidential big Mac to determine
to what extent it is poison. Well, I mean to
think about the way that it would be difficult for
you to actually determine the taste of most foods just
by say, licking them. You really need to sort of
chew them up and feel them throughout your mouth. Yeah.
But the crazy thing about this is that it was

(42:19):
a scanner. It was, as it was described in Nature,
it as a photonic tasting system. So again it means
that you could, uh, it was non invasive, and then
you could you could just point it at wine or
cheese and and get get a sense of what it's
nutritional data might be or what its chemical composition might be. However,

(42:42):
looking around, I couldn't find much info on where this
area of research has lead. But at any rate, it
has a lot of potential to it as as just
a tool for enforcing food safety and and maybe maybe
getting to the point, uh later down the line where
there'll be some sort of maybe handheld device and you
can essentially you know, Star Trek, you're a big mac,

(43:05):
and see if it has been compromised. All right, So
if our voices sound a little bit weird now, or
sound any different, it's because we just had to hop
into another studio. But here we are, we're still going.
So we just talked about this idea of like photonic
tasting of foods. Obviously that kind of tasting is a
little bit different than the idea of tasting for poison,
which we were talking about a minute ago, but it's

(43:26):
also very different from the overall digestive process, right right,
And as we get into digestion, I want to discuss
something that is outside the strict domain of just science
and gets more into this place where art meets science.
And it's the work of a Belgian artist by the
name of Vim Delvoy who created a series of Kloaca

(43:50):
machines over the years, and each of these is a
kind of mechanical and chemical disassembly machine for food. So
he consulted gastro intestine experts as well as plumbers and
rolled out the first version just like Cloaca one in
two thousand and he's kept going with these. Uh, like
the most current version that We've been multiple iterations of Cloaka,

(44:13):
but the most current version is active right now in
the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. And you
can even have a nest cam up so you can
you can go online if you look up them Delvo
that's w I M D E L V O y E. Uh.
Look up his website, there's all of his works on there.
Has a pretty good website and uh. And then there's

(44:35):
a link to this live video and you can watch
this machine uh slowly uh turning food into poop, slowly
digesting food. Uh. If you know what you were looking at,
you would just assume that it's just some random piece
of machinery, perhaps in a factory somewhere. There's nothing particularly
dynamic or night marrick about it. But yet it is

(44:56):
a mechanical digestion system. So part of his whole artistic
vision here is that this machine, the Kloec machine, is
essentially useless. All it does is turned food into poop
without generating anything worthwhile out of the process. And his
argument here is that thus two is the modern world,
all consuming, all pooping, and producing nothing of real value

(45:21):
in the process. Because again this is art. But he's
but but it's it's it's more than just you know what.
What he's created here does have a lot in common
with the digesting the defecating duck. Uh, you know there,
except he's he's actually using a chemical process. There's a
chemical and mechanical process taking place in kloeaca Um that

(45:43):
is not there with the duck. But he has also
created something that is something of a philosophical toy right
that we're supposed to look at it, and he makes
us think about about the traditions he's playing with here
and the statement he's making about modern society, but makes
us think in a slight different way because here the
process of at least not the whole process of digestion,

(46:05):
but at least the process of turning fresh food into
fecal matter essentially is no longer one of these like
great mysteries that can't be accessed by the mechanists. Right now,
this one, we've got this part sort of figured out,
though we still there's still maybe some things about digestion
we don't fully have figured out. Oh yeah, and I'm
not I don't mean to imply it is a perfect

(46:26):
facsimile of human digestion, because there's a lot going on,
but he is. He has created a reasonable bio mechanical
facsimile of the of the process. And when you look
at pictures of it, it looks like an assembly line.
It looks like this, and depending on the lighting, some
of the images are wonderful because it looks it looks
like something out of the matrix, you know, um, with
these like uh, these kind of containers hanging from this uh,

(46:50):
this platform, and there's like even a small conveyor belt
that I think is used at the very end. In
some instances, the poop has been sold at the very
end of it, Like this is the thing you can
purchase as your souvenir of Cloaca. Does it come in
a container? They just put it in your hands. I
think it's in a container. Yeah, like uh uh and

(47:11):
uh you know, and he has all like cool logos
in line, Like there's the Cloaca logo that has kind
of the it's not quite the Michelin man. It's Mr Clean,
I guess. But he's like a genie with intestines. That's interesting. Um.
But he then this isn't the only time that he's
used um um technology in uh in his work. For instance,

(47:32):
he also produced a project titled Chapelle and MoU Dam,
which makes use of X ray technology. So he had
X rays taken up individuals engaged in various sex acts
so that the X rays could then be transformed into
stained glass cathedral windows. Okay, so that's this. I think
this illustrates all One of the things I love about

(47:54):
them Delvo is that he he seems like a character
from a William Gibson novel, and I really loved that
about him of a cyberpunk art rascal. Yeah yeah, But anyway,
Kloaka is very much in the spirit of the pooping duck.
But the next part of the equation, obviously, like where
do we go from here, would be to consider the
creation of machines that don't just turn food into poop,

(48:17):
but they can potentially acquire food on in their own
and then maybe even obtain energy from its meal, because
that's ultimately that's something Cloaka is not doing. The cloak
is not going out and grazing in the field. It
is a machine that is fed, uh and then produces
poop at the other end, Uh, it is not catching
food on its own, and it is not you know,

(48:38):
creating a energy out of what it is doing. It
is not thriving on its meal. And that brings us
to the echo bot and its various kin. So roboticists
at Bristol Robotics Laboratory has been a great deal of
time over the years developing robot predators that hunt down
and eat living organisms, or could potentially hunt down and
eat living organism. This sounds like a good project, Well, no,

(49:02):
it is it is and then break all of this
down into energy. Yeah, and I know it makes people
think of various like terminator scenarios, but we're not talking
about large predators that would say hunt down like adult
mammals or like they're not going after deer. But for instance,
they had an earlier project, slug bot product project where
the thing would be that it would it would it

(49:23):
would eat garden slugs and break them down for energy.
And they've since they moved on to Ecobot two that
would eat flies. They also explored the possibilities of plankton
eating robot robots that would be you know, you know
out in the ocean. Uh. And then the eco bat three.
This was the world's first robot to exhibit true self sustainability.
It boasted onboard fluid circulation and this robot was capable

(49:46):
of operating within an enclosed environment for seven days by
collecting its food and water from from like an arena
environment that consisted of like liquid food in different dishes
um and the The actual digesting is done by a
series of microbial microbial fuel cells or m fcs. So
bacteria consumes food and produces hydrogen atoms as a byproduct,

(50:09):
the hydrogen goes into a fuel cell which generates electricity
to power the robot plus uh, you know, pure water,
which the robot then the essentially kind of drinks to
keep itself from being dehydrated. I guess you could say
the remaining biomass goes through the entire cycle once more
before being eliminated. And then in the years since, they've
moved on to ecobot four. That's the most current version

(50:33):
of it, which is all about peering the bio the
power requirements of various electronic applications, robotic or non robotic,
with the power generated by the MFC stacks. And this
is There are a lot of cool projects that the
Bristle Robotics Laboratory is involved in, um a lot of
them involving bio energy. For instance, they have one that

(50:55):
is used using urine to power up a mobile phone
via this microbial fuel cell. It demonstrates for the first
time the charging of a commercially available mobile phone using
microvial fuel cells fed with real human urine. So I mean,
like in this, you know, we're kind of going beyond
merely this absurd dream of wanting to create machines that

(51:18):
do what humans do or pooh, what humans pooh? Uh
is the case may be. But the getting into a
situation where it's like, okay, if we couldn't if we
can create something like digestion, like true digestion in a machine,
like what are the various applications They're like, if you
have a machine that essentially eats and produces uh energy
for your cell phone, then that's that's wonderful. That's like,

(51:41):
that's a potential real world application. Likewise, the idea of
some sort of marine drone that doesn't have to be recharged,
it just simply eats plankton, uh as if it were
a you know, filter feeding whale or fish. And they
they're working on other products to robert robots that decom
pose artificial gills for robots in various applications for water

(52:05):
clean up and wastewater management using these m f c
s so uh. Their website is definitely worth checking out.
If you go to a Bristol Robotics Lab dot com um,
it'll give you a pretty good insight into like where
we are and where we seem to be going with
the possibility for digesting robots. So robots that do some

(52:26):
something that is very similar to digestion and humans. Well,
it's really interesting to see yet again how um a project,
I mean, this happens throughout the history of technology, a
project that began as a kind of you could say
generously and intellectual exercise you could say ungenerously, just sort
of like a pointless little display. Um. Either way, it

(52:50):
has progressed in something that you could imagine being actually useful,
like I imagine oh, I don't know, you know, as
self powering sort of robots that that for it throughout
the environment, say cleaning up litteral waste or detoxifying the
environment and uh and sustaining themselves through you know, the
normal kinds of biomatter that would be eaten by animals anyway, right, Yeah,

(53:13):
I mean it's it's I guess the thing is with
any technology, they're cascading effects, they're they're they're different applications
that spin off from the core investigation. I mean, we
see that one of the post notable examples is the
space program, and it's often touted that, Yeah, even if
you're not convinced about the necessity for human space travel

(53:34):
and exploration of our our solar system. UM, which I
want to stress that I think, I do think those
are important exercises for for our species. But even if
you're not totally on board with those, there are all
these other technologies that spin out of that conquest and
uh and many of those have very important real world,

(53:54):
everyday applications that you can't always predict, right, And the
unpredictable nature, I think is to the key. It's like, well,
just because you can't think of a way that it's
going to pay off, doesn't mean it's not going to
pay off, right, Yeah, And just this kind of comes
down to the basic One of the basic facts about
scientific investigation in general is that you know, they're all

(54:15):
sorts of studies out there that can be criticized with
the whole shrimp on a treadmill criticism and saying, what,
you know, this is ridiculous, what why are you testing
for this? Why are you? Why are you? Why are
you putting tax dollars into this sort of research just
to find out you know, no, um, you know how
fast it shrimp runs or whatever the criteria happens to be.

(54:36):
I mean, I think the time to criticize the study
is if there's something wrong with its methodology. I mean,
either if it's like unethical or something, or if you
have reason to doubt that its results are sound. If
you don't have those issues, then I don't know. I
kind of hesitate to attack studies even that seem frivolous
one way or another, because you don't exactly know how

(54:58):
that knowledge might be applied. There might be things that
the researchers have in mind that you don't realize, right,
And if nothing else, they're contributing to our our overall
knowledge of the natural world and uh and and pushing
that that boundary, pushing that threshold. And we often don't
know what lies beyond that threshold. But the next level

(55:19):
of exploation of discovery will be you don't know what
information might be useful to somebody in the future when
facing a problem that we haven't even encountered yet exactly.
All right, So does that do it for machines that poop?
I think so? I mean, I'm sure we left some
things out, you know that generally, like in terms of
just looking at methods and technologies for breaking down organic matter. Uh,

(55:44):
you know, there's some other projects out there. Uh, these
especially the echo bot program is probably one of the
more notable ones, and also one of the more glamorous
because you have you know, anytime you have discussion of
a robot eating garden slugs, obviously that's gonna that's gonna
to everyone's attention, that's going to garner some headlines. But
I think this provides sort of a nice overall, especially

(56:06):
to begin with something that is an invention that is
not or a desire for an invention that is not
born out of necessity, and exploring how it can come
back around to something that that does satisfy some necessities
or or attempts to satisfy some necessities in our world. Totally,
this has been more interesting and more relevant to the
history of technology than I would have imagined. But I

(56:29):
do I do implore everyone the next time you're watching
a robot movie, ask yourself, does this robot poop? Um? Well? Actually,
you know what this does come up because I think
it is still a part of our intuition that something
about the chemical digestion process and the ability to sustain
oneself on organic food matter is integral to our idea

(56:50):
of what's alive. There's even a scene, um, do you
remember the scene in the movie Ai where there is
the robot child that's having trouble bonding with its family,
and essentially the android wants he wishes he were a
real boy, and he there's one scene where I think
what he does is he tries to eat food, like

(57:11):
he puts food into his mouth and choose it up
and tries to swallow it, which, of course, you know,
he's not good for him because he's a robot. But
I think the implication is he sees that as like
an essentially truly organic and human activity that he can't do,
and if he could do, maybe that would make him
a real boy. Yeah, yeah, this is This is something
that has explored a bit on the uh the rather

(57:32):
excellent British series Humans, which basically takes uh you know,
an android ubiquitous android technology scenario and um and explores
some interesting themes there while also commenting on various uh
you know, current events and current problems and uh you know,
such as the refugee crisis and so forth, and also

(57:56):
just our general tendency to uh focus on mothering and
treat people horribly for various reasons that you know, pertain
to their their race, their ethnicity, their gender, their sex,
their sexual preferences, etcetera. Uh, but but in that series,
the at least some of the robots, perhaps all of them,

(58:16):
have the ability to to eat human food and it
goes into like a balloon like receptacle in their throat
and upper chest, which then they could like they empty
manually later like they take it back out of their
throat and empty it into a you know, a sink
or something. So the eating is merely like four appearances,

(58:37):
it's like an aesthetic thing. Yeah, And I think and
there are some cases where the robots are using it deceptively,
but I think in general it's there because there was
a there was a realization that humans want a human
experience out of the machine that they've created in their
own likeness, and a big part of that is being
able to share a meal. You want to be able
to go up to lunch with a friend exactly. So Yeah,

(58:57):
anyone interested in a good robot viewing, I recommend show.
I think three seasons have come out, and uh, you know,
they get into issues regarding titological singularity. Um, then it's
you know, it's it's a it's a fun series. And
then more to the point, it does make you think cool,
all right, Well, Yeah, that's it for pooping ducks then,
and uh we'll hope to join you next time. In

(59:20):
the meantime, you can check out all the other episodes
of Invention at invention pot dot com and we're always
open up. We're always open to suggestions for the future,
key and inventions. You would like us to cover new
looks at past Invention episodes We've we've covered uh let
us know. We've received some wonderful feedback from folks already.

(59:41):
We've been adding things to the list and we hope
to do uh cover some of those in the future.
Definitely huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Tory Harrison and our guest producer today Maya Cole. If
you would like to get in touch with us with
feedback on this episode or any other to suggest to
topic for the future, just to say hello, you can

(01:00:02):
email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention
is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H