9 Highly Specific Robots You Need to Meet

From the robot who desperately wants to feed you tomatoes to the one that likes to hitch rides on turtles, Will and Mango explore the strange, hilarious world of robots (including at least two of them that might want to eat you.)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will? What's that mango? So I know you've
gotten really unto running recently, and I think there's an
accessory from Japan you really need to invest in. It's
called tomaton. Tomaton that sounds cool. So so what's a toomaton? Well,
it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a robot backpack
that feeds you tomatoes on the run. That is not
what I expected to say that that is much less

(00:22):
cool than I expected. Basically, there's this giant cartoony tomato
that sits on your head and it's got this clear
tube full of tomatoes that kind of hangs down your spine.
And as you run, this robotic arm swoops back to
grab a tomato, and then it swoops down in front
of you with that juicy fruit and sticks it in
your face. And I'm kind of surprised more elite athletes

(00:43):
don't use it. Well, you know, my kids already make
fun of me for what I look like when I run,
and so I can only imagine this is just going
to give them that much more ammunition, which is probably
all the more reason I should do it. But I'm
curious why tomatoes, of all things I've never wanted a
tomato while I was running, Well you haven't before, but
now you will. So it was invented by this company

(01:05):
called Kagome, which is Japan's premiere tomato juice and catchup
manufacturer apparently. But I am not done talking about Tamaton
just yet. So while the original Tmaton is pretty good
for five k's, you might want to look into the
petite Tamaton for marathons. It's uh, it's lighter, smaller. Instead
of um that robot arm feeder, It's got a trigger

(01:27):
and a tube and you can actually shoot tiny tomatoes
in your mouth anytime you want. It does have a
tomato timer that prevents you from eating too many tomatoes
too quickly, so you do pace yourself with it. So
that's that's really impressive. I can't say that I've ever
been at risk of feeding myself too many of anything
while on a long run, but whatever, that's great. Yeah,

(01:48):
well it's just the first of nine facts about robots
we're covering for today's show, Celesidising Day their podcast listeners,

(02:15):
Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and is
always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh Ticketer and
sitting behind the soundproof glass. Now this guy is working
on another movie reboot now Mango. We've seen him work
on so many ideas for movie reboots, and this one
is for a feminist reboot for Short Circuit too. So
I think this is gonna be a big one. This

(02:35):
may be his most brilliant one yet. But that's that's
our friend and producer Tristan McNeil over there. That's amazing Tristan.
So I know we both love robots, and I certainly
was a Jetsons fan. I had kept Sella as a kid. Uh,
lots of radio shot kits, and you know, I loved
building weird sort of automated inventions. But there's actually another

(02:55):
reason we're doing a show on robots today, right, that's right.
So one of our four her guest Simone Yatch, and
you probably know her for her amazing crappy robots that
she builds and tests on YouTube. And we are huge
fans of Simone and if you think about some of
the examples of things that she's built, she built the
the robot that shampoo's your hair for you just got
a hilarious video of this, or the alarm clock that

(03:18):
wakes you up just by slapping you in the face,
which was also incredibly amusing. But you know, she she
got some not so great news, though she um feels
like she's gonna be okay. So she found out that
she has a brain tumor, is going to undergo surgery
this month, and they're optimistic about the prospects for this.
But we still we really wanted to wish her the

(03:38):
very best of luck, so we made this little nine
things in her honor. That's right, So get well soon, simone.
So back to our love of robots for a second.
So people always ask me about my favorite stories and
facts for Mental Floss, and they're a handful I always
talked about. But my favorite invention has to be this
robotic fish that gets other fish to follow it, because

(03:58):
it sounds like a small idea, like why do you
care that you can create a leader among fish? And
the answer is so much more interesting. It's so that,
like if there's an oil spill or a disaster or
something devastating, you can actually lead schools of fish away
from that disaster. And I just think that's amazing. It
is pretty cool, and I would say it's I mean

(04:19):
it's not as important as the backpack Tomato robot, but
it feels like it's almost as important as the backpack
to make no picking on thomasons. What robot factor are
you gonna start with? Well, all right, well, here's one
that I hadn't really thought about before, and it's what
personality your vacuum cleaners should have? And you know, I
know you've probably thought about this. You come up with
lots of great questions that I had never thought about it,

(04:42):
and apparently a lot of scientists hadn't thought about it either.
So robots are mostly supposed to be functional, right, but
you know, we're obviously going to have preferences for one
robot vacuum cleaner over another if they exhibit these certain
behaviors with their sounds. You know, if you think about
the sounds they make, or the light they put out,
or the motions they go through, you know we will
have preferences among these. So kay, can you talk me

(05:05):
through a few of these. Well, let's say you programmed
a robot vacuum cleaner to not leave a certain area
until it removed a spot. So just imagine it's just
going over and over the same area, and these kind
of short jarring motions and if it does that, it
might come across as obsessive, you know, just going back
and forth over that one unimportant spot while there's this
whole room it needs to vacuum. So scientists at delfta

(05:28):
University in the Netherlands decided to determine what types of
personalities people want from their vacuum cleaners. So they rounded
up fifteen early adopters. These are people who were predisposed
to buying robot vacuum cleaners. And then things got a
little bit weird, so they hired a bunch of actors
to either crawl around or walk around pretending to be

(05:49):
vacuum cleaners with different personality traits. Now, at first I
thought this was just made up, but this was an
actual study. And the only noises they could make were
vacuum cleaner noise, so you think worrying and sucking sounds.
But they could change patterns and ways that they moved,
and they were actually asked to act out these thirty
different personality traits for vacuum cleaners. How in the world

(06:12):
they could have these thirty different possible traits, I don't know,
but you know, just as examples. They could be bold
or calm, or talkative or several other things. But it's
just crazy to imagine this. That's funny. It sounds like
a terrible improv activity. But as it does, so when
did the scientists actually learn from this? Well, I mean
most of it was honestly pretty straightforward, like you don't

(06:33):
want to chatterbox for a vacuum cleaner, and most people
also don't want something that feels whimsical, like it might
make more sense for a vacuum cleaner to move in
circles or you know, maybe these unpredictable patterns once it's
mapped out all of the dirt that's in the room,
but people actually want to see straight lines and routine.
So whether that's actually, you know, the most efficient way

(06:56):
to vacuum a room, people perceive that to be the
most efficient. But yeah, actually, honestly, I just like that.
We had to hire a bunch of Shakespearean trained actors
to play the role of like vacuum number three, just
to figure all of this out. That's horrible, But I
do think it's an interesting idea about how much should
we care for and about our robots. And I was

(07:17):
looking at something to that same effect. I found this
article from two thousand and thirteen that you know, these
soldiers who were using bomb disposal robots on battlefields were
actually becoming too emotionally attached to them, or at least
that was the concern. And the robots weren't particularly cute,
like they didn't have like sweet faces or anything, but
but the soldiers actually started treating them as mascots or pets,

(07:40):
and then when they were destroyed, they actually have funerals
for them. But one of the big questions for robot
makers at the time was just how anthropomorphic, like do
you design these instruments, because you know, you do want
soldiers to care for the equipment and maintain it properly,
but you don't want them to care so much and
be so gingerly with these things that they refused to
put them in harm's way. You know, with too much

(08:01):
emotional attachment, you might not send your robot into a
space that you think dangerous, and that's precisely what they're
built for. Yeah, that is pretty interesting. It's not something
i'd really thought about before. All Right, well, here's a
robot that you might have a little bit less sympathy for,
so you remember the carnivorous furniture we read about And
this was a while back, but you remember this, right, Yeah.
I feel like it was some European designer was something,

(08:22):
and they'd created these porch lamps that were, um, they
were like powered by catching and digesting insects and flies.
It was a little gruesome for my taste. Well, if
that was gruesome for you, this is definitely not going
to ease your anxieties. And this comes from two thousand nine.
There was a Wired article and they reported that the
Department of Defense was funding battlefield robots that could power

(08:44):
themselves by collecting organic matter. Now that organic matter included
human corpses, So that's just great. We're gonna have these
flesh powered battle bots on the fields now, I mean,
it's true, that's exactly what they are. And it's like
these scientists have never watched a sci fi horror movie.
And it feels pretty predictable how your war might end

(09:05):
in all of this, And and honestly, the worst part
is that the project is called let's see, it's called
energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot or EATER for short. Yeah, I'm
not sure how much I love that fact, I feel
like you're just viewing my nightmares. But speaking of human
robot relations, I'd like you to know that we've got

(09:26):
work to do on both sides of that equation. And
this comes from the story of a little robot called Hitchbot.
So Hitchbot was built around two thousand fifteen, and it
was this ultra q hitchhiking robot that's only real mission
was to see the world and find some good humanity.
I mean, that's a nice idea. I'm not sure I
understand exactly what that means. So how did hitch Bot work. Well,

(09:47):
it was a Canadian creation and it was solar powered. Um,
it had led lights, it wore a smile all the time,
and had these rain boots and uh, hitchpot was about
the size of a small child. So it was pretty
hard not to love this cute robot. And it was
also built to be light enough that you could just
pick it up and buckle it into your back seat.
The whole idea was it would take photos along the

(10:08):
way to document the trip, and it had a few
small benefits for the people who picked it up, like
it came with a cigarette lighter and adapter. So I
guess you could charge your phone from it or whatever.
But the idea was like the creators would put a
destination on hitchpot. So one of the destinations with like
San Francisco, and they tell people to pick him up
and then drop them off somewhere you thought someone else
might pick him up. Really easy directions, right, So hitchbot

(10:31):
traveled across Canada, he took a trip across Europe, and
then he came to the US. That sounds like a
setup for something. So what happened exactly? So hitchpot had
this great bucket list he wanted to see before you
got to San Francisco. You want to see like jazz
in New Orleans. You wanted to see the magic of
Disney World, various other landmarks. And he started his trip

(10:53):
well from Massachusetts. But then two weeks later he was
found dismembered in Philadelphia. Oh no, that's terrible. Yeah, I mean,
it's doubly sad. When you read his goal on his
home page, it reads, quote, I hope that my hitchhiking
trip will allow me to meet many interesting people, see
beautiful places, and learn more about humanity. So I mean,

(11:15):
I guess the lesson is you're not supposed to go
to Philly to learn about humanity, but apparently not well.
Speaking about robots learning, I found this great article and
news scientists, and it was called eight hilarious ways AI
has outsmarted us to get the job done. It's a
really fun piece because you know, we mostly only think
that humans and animals can come up with creative solutions,

(11:37):
and I really don't think about robots being able to
do that. But these evolutionary algorithms do the same thing.
And as the computers are trying to optimize tasks based
on the rules you give them, it's pretty funny because
they actually end up failing in some of the most
ridiculous ways that are that are great to read about.
So I already like this, but I'm curious about the specifics.

(11:57):
Can you give me a couple Well, one of the
scientists who has interview put it this way quote, if
you close one loophole, the artificial intelligence finds another. To
some extent, it feels like you're wily coyote with the roadrunner.
You set up these wildly complex systems that fail in
ways you didn't expect. So you know, for instance, he
has the computer to create a creature that jumps really high,

(12:18):
and the way it measured how high the jump was
was by how high the creature's foot was off the ground.
So instead of trying to train the creature to jump
this wiley AI just had this creature do a somersault
on the ground and then kick its feet up mid
role and so it's just you imagine, this is pretty
fun to see. But there was also a different simulation
where the AI was supposed to create the fastest possible creature,

(12:41):
but instead of designing a snake or like some aerodynamic
hawk or something like that, it basically spent all its
time building this giant creature and then all they did
was push it over because you know, the velocity the
fall was faster than anything else that it could possibly
That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, I was trying to even
think like how they would screw that one up. But honestly,

(13:02):
I think my favorite way that AI failed was when
it was tasked with limiting a computer's processor usage. So
the solution the robot just turned the computer off. I
love that actually, So here's a click fact. It's in
a similar vein. I I was looking up a cutting
edge story on how far robots had come in two
thousand seven and uh scientists in NYC in Japan designed

(13:26):
this really cute wine bot and the idea was that
you could feed it wine, cheese, or meat, those three
things and it would identify the food for you, kind
of like a personal somalia or a metal gastronomist, that's
what they called it. And it actually do it without
tasting the food too, So you can actually put a
wine bottle in front of it and the robot could
tell if the wine was authentic and the beverage matched

(13:48):
the label outside the bottle. That would have been good
for our old wine frauds episode. Yeah, But you know
what's interesting is that after impressing journalists with the demonstration,
this cameraman put his hand up to the robot up
and the robot identified the human hand is bacon. So
apparently the tech fact then still had a little ways
to go. Wow, that would be unfortunate if your hand

(14:10):
tasted like or smelled like bacon. Rather, I think that
would just be be torture. But you know, also I'm
a little curious because cannibals have always said humans taste
like chickens, so maybe they're a little off. I know
my feeling is that, like maybe bacon So delicious and
cannibals are just trying to protect their interests and keep
hipsters away from human meat. I I don't know, But
what I do know is we've got two more robot

(14:31):
facts to give you right after this break. Welcome back
to Part Time Genius. We're talking robots or mango. I
don't know if you knew this. Robots as people used

(14:52):
to call them back in the fifties. Is that true?
That's how it was pronounced. Yeah. I was actually watching
this old documentary and it was about how scientists we're
working on robot butlers of the future, and the narrator
and even the people on the screen kept calling them robots.
For somebody, that's super weird. So I feel like we
should bring that fact. But what's your last fact about robots? Well,

(15:14):
I know we've talked about humans hijacking animals in the past,
and we did this story a while back on how
scientists could manipulate cockroaches, you know, to get them to
move right or left with these I guess it was
with electrical pulses and and we can actually do the
same thing with beatles as well, yeah, I've seen that
you can actually put a um tiny camera on a
beetle now, which is pretty amazing, that's right, And so

(15:36):
to think about how that might be used. You know,
the advantage of a swarm of beetles oversay, like you
know this army of drones is, is that the beatles
are used to flying in bad weather, so they naturally
know where to feed themselves, how to rest, and so
because of that, you don't have to worry about solar
panels not working or a battery that might run out,
and you know, they're obviously super nimble, and they're just

(15:57):
way more cost effective too. But the weirdest animal I've
read about humans using to their advantage are turtles, which
obviously nothing like beetles, and apparently scientists from Korea have
created these parasitic robots that live on top of turtles
and kind of like your tomato robot, it will actually
feed the turtle snacks when they move in the right direction.

(16:19):
So I totally get insects. It's creepy that you can
turn them into cyborgs and control them, but you know,
they can get anywhere. It makes sense. They can like
fly and crawl wherever. But why do you want to
control a turtle? Well, I mean the whole ideas that
there are going to be disasters that happen from time
to time. So but this like floods or spills or earthquakes,

(16:39):
and we just can't get to these spots very fast.
But if you hijack a turtle population in the area,
or any animal really, and then you survey the land
by using them as your rover, it actually becomes really beneficial.
And unlike the bugs, which you have to outfit with cameras,
if you're just dropping these parasite robots on land and
they each find a turtle, right, it ends up being

(17:01):
much more efficient. That's pretty crazy, Okay, So here's my
last robot fact. In two thousand eight, a post STOC
fellow at Hakkaido University wanted to figure out if robot
comedians can make people laugh. So he had people read
a bunch of text message jokes and then he had
robots deliver those same jokes. So what happened? Where the
where the robots actually funny? Yeah, I mean they were

(17:23):
marginally funnier. On a scale of one to five. The
text jokes scored a two point three, while the average
robot comedian landed a two point eight. Oh that's not bad.
I mean that's half a point more. It's pretty good. Actually, yeah,
But then he evolved the robots to make them even
funnier by adding fart noises. Of course, the combination of
robots making jokes and fart noises drove the numbers even higher,

(17:47):
and the moral was pretty easy to figure out, like,
robot comedians can be funny, but gassy robot comedians are
even funnier. That's some pretty good science, you know. I
feel like we had some good facts here, but I
feel like what you just closed with with some pretty
solid science and the fact that even robots can figure
out that fart noises are funny, I feel like I'm

(18:09):
gonna have to give you the trophy today, Mango. Thank
you so much, well, and thank you guys for listening.
We'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow